Angry Planet - The Difference Between Obedience and Deference

Episode Date: June 18, 2020

Our guest this week is Pauline Kaurin. Kaurin is the Stockdale Chair in Professional Military Ethics at the US Naval War College and the author of the new book On Obedience: Contrasting Philosophies for the Military Citizenry and Community.What obedience meansWhen civil disobedience is warrantedThe difference between difference and obedienceThe civl-mil divideHow to re-negotiate the social contractMisreading “A Few Good Men”You can listen to War College on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is warcollegepodcast.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/warcollegepodcast/; and on Twitter: @War_College.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. You know, and I do talk about that at the end of the movie, like the two of the Marines who were on trial. Like the younger one is sort of confused because they're convicted. Right. He's like, I don't understand what happened. And the older Marines, that's to him where Marines, it was our, it was our job. job to protect the innocent, to protect the weak. And we failed to do that, right? That's the closing moment of the film, right? That's the, you know, that's the clincher of the film. And so, then you read that back on Nicholson's character. Yeah, he's not the good guy. You're listening to War College, a weekly podcast that brings you the stories from behind the front lines. Here are your hosts. Hello, welcome to War College. I'm your host, Matthew Galt. With us today is Pauline Corrin.

Corinne is the Stockdale Chair in Professional Military Ethics at the U.S. Naval War College and the author of the new book on obedience, Contrasting Philosophies for the Military Citizenry and Community. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. All right. So we do want to say up at the top that the views and opinions you express here are your own and do not reflect official policy or opinion of the U.S. Naval War College.

That is the truth. So that said, how does it feel to have a book out that's got a hell of a newspaper? Yeah, it's a little weird. The book is turning out to be a lot more relevant than I imagined that it would be. I mean, these are kind of perennial issues that come up from time to time, but the portions of the book that have to do with civil disobedience and, disobedience within the military and still male relations have in the last week perhaps gotten more confirmation than I would have imagined when I was writing the book.

Okay. So at the top here, can you define obedience for me? Because I think a lot of us hear that and we have kind of this knee-jerk reaction to that word, specifically in the American context, right? Right. So kind of what for the purposes of your book and kind of the, I wouldn't even call it an argument, but the, like, the exploration that you're making in the book. What is obedience?

Well, what I'm interested in the book is what you might think of as what would count as justified obedience. So I try to make a distinction between, you know, virtuous obedience and what is normally called blind obedience. Sort of I'm just following orders. I'm just doing what I'm told. on one hand and on the other hand what Tim O'Brien the same as a fiction author

who wrote the things we carried, he described his obedience in going to Vietnam sort of as passive obedience. So it's not that you're really choosing it, it's sort of the path of least resistance. So for me, obedience has to be intentional.

It has to be the product of some kind of deliberation and intention and choice. And it's also when you choose to obey, it's a judgment about the thing that you're being asked to do. You are affirming that it at least is a reasonable thing to do and doesn't violate any sort of moral norms

or moral or legal consideration. So I think it's a much narrower notion of obedience than typically we have, but that's part of the point of the book is to say that not all obedience is morally a good thing, right? It's not necessarily just a good thing to do what you're told. And the book, you know, certainly looks at military examples, but the idea is also to look at how it works in a civilian context. And there's a lot of pop culture in the book.

But there's also stories about my children who are now teens. who are now teenagers and obedience in the context of parenting. So the idea is to really explore what is the kind of obedience that we want. That is a good thing. And when ought we be obedient or less than obedient? Or when ought we be disobedient or perhaps less than obedient? One of the things that strikes me about the book, and I think a lot of good kind of philosophical and ethical works feel this way.

is that it feels like you're working it out on the paper as you're writing it. Yeah. Right? And this is kind of like your dis... It's like you had these questions on top of mind and are doing the research and looking through the historical and philosophical sources and kind of piecing together your own answers to these questions. I'm wondering why you were driven to tackle this subject. Like what was the impetus?

Yeah, that's a good question. And a lot of people ask me that. And, you know, I don't know that I have a good, clean, I need to construct a better narrative. But all things in all things in life, it's sort of messy. So first of all, I'm a parent. So obedience comes up a lot sort of just in my personal life. And especially as my kids have gotten older, navigating, you know, the process of them becoming independent adults. has me thinking about obedience.

But as a moral question, it comes up a lot. And I taught undergraduate philosophy for, you know, for 20 years. And so the moral questions of obedience come up when I teach Antigone, Sophocles play Antigone, or Shakespeare's Henry V or a whole host of other sources in the history of philosophy. So especially in social and political philosophy and philosophy of law, which I taught a lot. the question of obedience and disobedience and civil disobedience is the sort of perennial issue you talk about. So I was thinking about writing a book on this, and then the election of 2016 happened, and I was getting a lot of direct messages and emails from my colleagues in the military sort of posing a lot of these questions. And also civilian people in my civilian university asking about civil disobedience.

So I think the election of 2016 really crystallized some concerns that a lot of people had, especially. And I mentioned this in the book that then candidate Trump had said on the question of war crimes that if by command them to commit war crimes referring to the military, they will do so. and that was a very sort of shocking statement to people who are members of a professional military. So I think it was sort of a perennial issue, something that I found interesting. I also noticed that there wasn't really a good philosophical treatment of obedience. They're good treatments of obedience from sort of a religious perspective. And then there's the civil disobedience literature. But there wasn't a good philosophical.

treatment of, well, what exactly is obedience? What is disobedience? How do we define these things? And so as an academic, when you see a gap in the literature, that's always a lovely thing because that's something that's part of our job is to address things that are perhaps unaddressed or try to put our scholarly skills to use in working through those things. But I wanted to do that in a way that was not just a scholarly book, but that was accessible to people in a wide range of backgrounds and educational experiences who could really, you know, think about this question, which is why the way the book is constructed, there's a lot of pop culture references. There's a discussion guide in the back, so people could use that either for personal reflection or for book groups or PME

or to be used perhaps in an undergraduate classroom. I also wanted this book to be a different kind of book contributing to the scholarly literature, but in a way that's more accessible. And I really like how you described the feeling of the book as like I'm working through these questions along with the reader. And that was, I wanted to write the book in a way that would replicate what happens in my classes. And that was the intention of the book, that it would feel like you were in class with me. And we were working together through these issues and we'd maybe had some common readings and some discussion. And I would give my scholarly views of things, but also invite you to think about what you think, which is what happens in my classroom.

It's speaking of your, speaking of your classrooms, and maybe this is different, different because of where you're teaching. But, you know, when I hear the word obedience, I have a very what I think of American, you jerk reaction to it. it's mostly pejorative. I immediately go to civil disobedience as being a very American and like the ethical and moral thing to do, right? I think of Henry David Thoreau. I think of the civil rights movement. You think of Gandhi. Why is it important to also look at like what are your thoughts on that specifically in kind of the American context and why is it important to consider also obedience? And are, are there, times when civil disobedience towards power is also kind of in a weird way being obedient towards

the greater social contract? Yeah, so there's a lot kind of packed in there and I think as Americans, I mean our American narrative is born out of acts of civil disobedience from throwing some tea into

the harbor which is property destruction. One needs to be reminded. You know, so our national birth narrative is rooted in disobedience. And through a variety of authors and experiences, we think of this idea of rebellion or obedience or disobedience is something that is maybe not particularly American, but it is very, you know, American.

And so I think it's something we pride ourselves on. And I think that that's somewhat of the, you know, reaction when we think about the Nuremberg trials, we wanted to be able to say to people will know just saying you were just following orders is not adequate. And so I think there is this piece in American history that probably rooted in the revolution, but also in the philosophical text of the revolution. that disobedience to some political powers at times can be obedience to natural law or to other kinds of moral considerations like justice. And if you look at what's going on in the streets right now, I think that's the argument that people are making. There is some disobedience that is going on.

But the argument is that it is, you know, as Martin Luther King Jr. said in his letter from the Birmingham Day, right that he's appealing there to what we're disobeying is injustice or we're disobeying unjust laws which is a kind of obedience then to a higher just order or to our maybe our obedience to our obligations to one another as citizens or within the military profession so there's different so ways of thinking about what is it that you're being obedient to and what is it that you're being disobedience to you. Right.

I feel like obedience is at the center of a lot of what we're seeing right now. Police demand obedience, and they often use violence to extract it. And it feels as if people are now demanding a different kind of obedience from the police. And we're seeing the conflict between those. Obviously, it's a lot more complicated than that. There's a lot more going on. but do you think I'm trying to think

how I want to phrase this what would you what would you want a police officer to take away from your book that obedience has to be justified right you don't I don't just get to say to my children you must obey me because I am your mother

even though I use that line a lot right but it's sort of joking right because that's actually not obedience, that's deference. And in the book, I make a distinction between deference and respect. And very often, both in the police context, we also find this in the military as well, that hierarchies produce a need for or desire for deference. I want you to do what I tell you or to show me what I think of as respect, not in virtue of something I've earned,

but in virtue of that I hold a position or that I hold an office, even if I'm really bad at that office. So, you know, when it comes to deference, I'll use sort of the queen of England, right? It doesn't matter if she's good at being queen or not, right? The ideas we're supposed to give her deference because of the office or the position that she hold. And I think that you see that, especially in police forces where the culture is very toxic, Some of the responses we're seeing in the street are responses by police officers who expect deference. And when they receive anything that doesn't look like their notion of deference and that is taken as disobedience and then must be addressed usually with force.

So I would hope that some police officers would read my book and take away that obedience has to be earned. And in fact, in one of the chapters, I argue that obedience is actually a negotiation. It's a negotiation of authority, which anyone who has teenagers will appreciate that that's exactly what's going on. But it's also something that happens in the military. You can only have command authority if the people you are commanding really allow you to. And I think one of the things that we are seeing right now in the streets is a renegotiation of what in the military, we call command authority. In political circles, we might think of it as a renegotiation of the legitimacy of state power.

If we think about the police as one instantiation of that, but also the political authorities, whether it's the president or other people, are finding that they're having to renegotiate the bounds of whatever authorities they can wheel. or not. And so I think that's a core piece of obedience. Obedience is not blind. It's not passive and it's not uncritical. In fact, I use the term critical obedience in the book. It's something we should think about and it should be given. And I don't want to make it sound like it's always a bad thing. We need obedience to function. In a political society, I need obedience for my household to function. The military needs obedience for it to function, but not all kinds of obedience are necessarily good. And so the question then becomes what kinds of obedience are good and necessary to society?

And then what do we do when that's not what is happening or that's not what is being asked for? Right. This ties into the conception of obedience as a virtue, right? Right. which I think loads it down with some important implications. Can you talk about that a little bit? Well, one of the, I mean, for something to be of virtue, going back to Aristotle and virtue ethics, it's a character or a quality that we would expect in a moral person.

Or for Aristotle, a moral community. So saying something as a virtue is saying it's something that we want people to do, we want people to cultivate. and so it has to have some kind of intrinsic good, has to have some kind of good to it. So that's kind of the first piece. But then virtues and Aristotle are not, I decide this is a virtue.

That's a collective decision and negotiation about what that virtue looks like. Aristotle said we're all political animals. And what you meant by that is we're, you know, we exist in a. a poll is we exist in a political community and it's that political community that gives rise and supports our morality or our virtue. So that's the first piece.

The second piece that I try to bring into this account of obedience is some concept from just war theory, which is the idea that, you know, certain kinds of force or certain kinds of things have to have justification. and I think obedience which very often, especially in case of both the military and the police forces, comes with at least potentially lethal force, has to be justified. And so I use some of the concepts in just war theory like proportionality and reasonable chance of success as ways that we judge whether or not we should give our obedience. So in the chapter on negotiation, talk about the mutinies on the Western Front from French troops in World War I when they essentially decided that they were being asked to fight battles, that there was no hopes of winning, and that would not conclude the war.

And so you had lots of disobedience, disobedient acts that ultimately culminated an outright mutiny. And what the French leadership found out was they had to basically renegotiate the terms of command obedience. Otherwise, their soldiers wouldn't fight. And so I think that that shows us that obedience is a much more complicated thing than we normally think of it. And so I think it's interesting to explore. I hope the book asks people to think about where their lines are and what they would obey and what they would disobey. Well, and I think a lot of people are asking themselves that question right now, right? Absolutely, yes.

Yeah. Just to be, it's just like, you think of it as this given thing, but the book really asks people to just kind of, to even to think about it and to really consider kind of this precious thing that when you are in a position of power over other people, people, you know, there is this negotiation there. And it shouldn't just be blind obedience should not be the norm. We should be thinking about these things actively. So if you are an officer in the military or if you are a police officer, how do you make sure, how do you train these two groups of people to consider these questions and be thinking about obedience in this way?

Yeah, that's a great question. That seems to be that sort of million dollar question right now. I think part of it has to be you need to think about the culture of your institution. And if the culture of your institution is built on some is built on deference or it is built on that it is the use of or the threat of lethal force that gets you respect or gets you your authority, if that's how you think about things. So sort of the, we're all familiar. familiar with the sheep dog, you know, narrative, like, I'm here to protect the sheep and all that kind of, you know, that Dave Grossman Killology. Dave Grossman, right, that whole thing. That's a very toxic narrative. And if you think of obedience and commanding obedience in those terms, we're already in trouble before we even get started. So I think people who train and educate military people like,

I do or police officers like some of my colleagues do, we have to really engage them in thinking about where the bounds of obedience are and that they are not entitled to blind obedience. They are not entitled to uncritical obedience. They're not entitled to passive obedience. It does not come with the office that this is something that has to be earned and has to be constantly negotiated and maintained. And I think that, you know, the police officers and military people who do this well, and there are certainly, you know, examples of that.

If you follow Patrick Skinner's Twitter feed, you see that there. It's a constant daily negotiation of making sure that that respect, that justification for the obedience is there. And we see the same thing in warfare because if people view the, the war, the war, war or the action is unjustified as the military is required to disobey unlawful orders. And there's a reason for that, right? You don't get to commit war crimes. There are certain things you simply do not get to do. And so I think it's worth thinking of having people think about the culture of their organizations

and the narratives that they use to think about their power and their role. in society because I think there are a lot of toxic narratives. I mean, we're finding out now that both the police force and the military have a white supremacist problem. I think that's indicative of certain kinds of toxic, you know, elements or narratives within both of those communities, which is not to say all members of those communities are that way. but when you have narrative like that, it's worth thinking about what kind of obedience are you asking and is that justified? And there's a long philosophical tradition of saying that blind and uncritical obedience is simply not morally justified. And in fact, so I was watching a documentary on Charles I first of England who got his head locked off because he asked,

for uncritical obedience from the parliament. And they said, no, you have to consult us. I mean, there's a historical example where literally command of authority was renegotiated. And in one case, unconditional obedience was repudiated to regicide, through killing of the king. So these are issues that are sort of, and those issues are still with us because the issue between Charles and the parliament was the question of taxation. right? And who could raise money and who had to answer to whom? We're still, you know, the executive versus the legislative branch and works. We're still wrestling with those issues today, right?

Literally today. I mean, speaking of those issues, I think the latest news is that the National Guard is being recalled, correct? In the framing I have seen of this in the news is kind of played out. There's so much that's been going on. Sometimes it's hard to keep track. The way I saw this played out is that Trump blustered and deployed. And kind of before and during that military brass wrote a bunch of letters and memos and talked to the press and said, this is bad, essentially.

right? Yeah. And I was wondering what you, I wanted to kind of get your reaction from the, from those official memos and letters. I think the one from General Millie, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was probably the most interesting, probably the most kind of direct. What do you make of these and do you think that these are, I mean, obviously they must have done something, right? Because we have this idea that Trump is immovable and we'll just do whatever the hell he wants, right? But this seems to be. to be an instance where he was, the generals actually made him back down, right? Yeah, I mean, I think it was a case of once again that obedience has negotiated. Yeah, and this is an interesting case. I would, you know, I have many civ-mill colleagues at the War College who have been writing the last week. I don't think they've slept at all about this issue because we have civilian control of the military.

and the military is used in certain ways, and because of our history, it is used in the idea is that is not to be used against our own populace. And of course, the reasons for that are rooted in the revolution. But they are also rooted in the English Revolution that I just alluded to. So the notion, so National Guard troops are often, can be used in this capacity. But I think the real concern was when Trump and national. that active duty, in other words, normal non-national guard troops, were going to be deployed. And that is sort of, you know, crossing a Rubicon literally kind of situation that caused a lot of

consternation because of the potential that you could have active duty, regular military troops potentially firing on or targeting their own civilian population. And it doesn't matter to me whether it's with rubber bullets or lethal force. You're still targeting people. You're still treating people as an adversary as a combatant in a war. And of course, we had Tom Cotton's, you know, op ed peace, which was essentially calling for that. And that's very troubling from the standpoint of the military profession because members of the profession take an oath to uphold the Constitution. And so these, you know, a lot of these norms are seen as part of the military profession also as constitutional norms.

So I think this was sort of, I think for Trump it was an attempt to sort of look tough. And if the governors can't handle this, then I'm going to call in the military and to perhaps answer some, you know, concerns about, you know, some of the looting and violence that had accompanied some of the protests. Although that's largely, I think almost exclusively disappeared by this point. But if we're looking at things last Monday, I think that that was a concern. But I think both from the military and also civilian people, you know, looked at that move and said, no, uh-uh, no, no, we're not. I mean, and it was pretty, even across partisan lines, which is unusual in this day and age, there wasn't sort of an immediate reaction. It's because of our history, I think. and because of how Americans look at obedience.

No, you're not going to have, you know, it's bad in us having us have to watch police brutality. We're not going to watch our own military, especially not regular military, as well, National Guard, who have been called out during the Civilized National Guard was called out in a situation, similar situation. So that's not unprecedented. But the notion of having regular military in the streets, let's say, of Washington, And there's just kind of the visceral reaction that showed, I think, where the lines of obedience were for people. And I heard from a lot of military people who were asking the question, what will I do if I'm asked to fire on my own co-citizens?

Like, I don't think I can do that. I don't think I should do that. And if that were to happen, that would produce a major moral quandary, I think, for many people. So I think the former military coming out was important, but then you have someone like Millie writing this memo just basically reminding everyone, okay kids, here's the parameters of our profession. And I don't think that was a memo just for the audience of one. It was a memo for the forces as well, but it was also perhaps a reminder to the commander-in-chief. here are the limits of your authority. And we saw lots of military people, veterans, retired people,

as well as other people coming out and making the same point. So it was a really, I tweeted last week that, you know, as a scholar, I was kind of thrilled that my, the core thesis of my book had not been disputed or had not been refuted at this point, but of course, feeling awful that this is, you know, that this is even happening for that, for that feeling. So, but it is really interesting to think about through the lens of obedience. And I think we have a few cases where Trump has floated something and when he gets pushed back, especially if it's very strong pushback and it's pushed back from the right quarter.

He doesn't back off. So you can see this negotiation happening. mean, at least with certain kinds of issues, maybe not with all issues. What are those other places? It tends to have to do with the military. So I referenced during the campaign when he said, you know, people will commit war crimes for me. And the military establishment came out and said, and lots of other people came out and said, no. And he backed off of that claim pretty quickly, right?

So there's been a, they tend to be those kinds of very, they tend to be where he's pushing a norm that's widely held across partisan lines. And then get, and then get some pushback. But some of that is also, I think the Trump administration tends to sort of float trial balloons. They, you know, through an anonymous source, leaked that, oh, they're thinking about this. And then you start to get some pushback. I think some of the movement of, as we've watched through the administration, work through COVID, you know, initially it's, oh, this is no big deal, it's not a problem, we don't need testing, we don't need a lockdown.

But then as things, you know, in that case, as evidence emerges, as events on the ground, overtake things, then there's a shift, right? You know, they're not able to maintain certain kinds of positions. So I think it's, you know, it's something we can. can see, right, the negotiation of obedience and what those lines of authority are, which is not to say, I don't want to come across as Paula Anish here. One would wish that the norms were not tested in such a way, but in certain cases, and I think this week was a pretty clear refutation of that. No, you're not to use military troops against your own populace. Like, people were just like, no,

we're not doing that. Yeah, I have to confess to my own kind of. of cynical reaction to these letters as they were initially rolling out. I saw them and I was like, okay, well, this is the C-Y, the cover-your-ass moment, right? They're getting these things in writing now so they can, so, you know, six years down the line when we're, when we're litigating all of this, they have something to point to. But then he pulled the National Guard out, which was a moment of, small hope for me. Yeah, so perhaps your cynicism is not entirely unwarranted, but every once in a while, like, you know,

maybe there are norms that maybe out of altruism or maybe out of pure self-interest, one could argue there's certain norms that the military needs to function, right, but that this is both a moral commitment on their part, it's also a self-interest, They're a profession, and if they can't regulate themselves, if they can't maintain the standards of their profession, then they're going to be in trouble. I think you see that with the policing profession right now. Yeah, absolutely. The communities are saying, okay, guess what?

We're going to pick your favorite term to fund you or limit your authority or we're going to potentially disband your unions. I mean, this is what happens when a profession does not sort of police its own boundaries. and that sort of allows itself to break norms and to break that trust. I mean, a definition of a profession is that it serves the common good. It serves the society. And when you fail to do that in certain important ways, then the society says, and part of a profession is you're given special permission. The police and the military get to do things that the rest of us don't get to do.

They have a monopoly on legitimate violence, right? Right? But it's given with the idea that there's the expertise there, that they will self-regulate and that they will serve the society. They act as agents of the society, not as their own, not in their own interest. And when that is breached, then you find the society saying, nope, guess what? We're taking back those permissions. And so I think we're seeing that pretty clearly with the, if you think of policing as a profession, we could debate whether it is or not. But you think of policing as a profession. I think you see that. That's what's going on right now. People are like, uh-uh, nope. It's time to sort of renegotiate the terms of a contract. What is it if it's not a profession?

So in the book I talk about Alstair McIntyre, who's a philosopher, wrote a book called After Virtue. He talks about communities of practice. And so there could be a range of communities of practice. And a profession is on the sort of most restrictive end of a community of practice. But there might be other kinds of communities of practice that maybe don't rise to the level of a profession.

A profession typically has to have special permissions, serve the common good, has to be self-regulating, has to demonstrate certain kinds of expertise. So historically, it's the military, the medical, profession, the legal profession, clergy, historically were considered a profession. I think generally policing is considered a profession, but certain other things like maybe education may not be considered a profession, but they're still a community of practice. So national security people, there might be a debate about whether they're a profession. I think most people would say they're not, but there are certainly a community of practice that has shared understandings and perhaps shared education and goals and identities and functions together in a certain way.

So even if it's not a profession, we can still talk about the community of practice as a way of thinking about, you know, what they are as a collective. when is disobedience a moral choice or I guess the correct moral choice I would say it's always a moral choice but when is it so maybe the question is when is is it a question is when is disobedience morally justified or yes there that's the that's the better

that's the better version of the question thank you thank you for workshopping this with me happy to just like that right um disobedience tends to be morally justified at least in my argument uh when when we meet some of the the the you know the the criteria especially the just war criteria um so disobedience especially civil disobedience i mean we have to look at what is the intention um is the intention of me disobeying the law just to get out of paying taxes, which I don't like to do because I would rather spend that money in shoes. Or is the intention to refuse to pay my taxes to sort of make a larger point because I think the government is using my tax money for immoral ends?

So is there a just cause? Am I protesting against the legitimate authority to make a point to my fellow citizens, typically disobedient? is either to raise consciousness about a moral issue or it's to actually change one's co-citizens' minds. So there might be different stages of disobedience, especially civil disobedience. But I think disobedience is justified generally, and it has to be quite serious, right? So there's, you know, criteria in just more like last resort, like, have you tried other things before you engage in disobedience, right, to change what the system is.

But this idea that it's something that's morally significant, perhaps has not been amenable to change at this point. And usually for most people, it has to be some kind of serious moral or justice issue. So if we look at the civil rights movement, right? You know, blacks and other marginalized communities had failed to be. able to exercise their political rights in other ways. And there was a long history of trying to renegotiate those boundaries and it being refused, often with violence in the Jim Crow South, for example, right?

And so it gets to a point where the injustice is so egregious that one has to disobey the law in order to make the moral point, or not be complicit in a moral system. and an immoral system, which in the military case, disobeying an unlawful order, say in order to commit a war crime, is to refuse to participate in an act of immorality or illegality. But generally, when it comes to disobedience, it needs to be over a fairly sort of significant issue.

So I think I tell this story in the book. So my kids are home alone, and the rule is they are not to leave the house when they are home alone. My oldest falls down and hits his toe and his toe starts bleeding pretty profusely. And my younger son, who has limited first aid skills, decide that he is going to leave the house and go to the neighbor's house to get help because there's no landline in the house. So he disobeyed our rule. But he disobeyed it, I think we would all agree, for a good reason. Like the situation was serious enough.

If my son just fell down like bruised his toe, that would not justify the disobedience. But this was sort of a, you know, there's a large amount of blood. It was clear that it was a serious enough situation. And he didn't have other resources to deal with, to deal with the situation, right? And so he disobeyed so then he can go get help. Not because he wants to leave the house to go play video games with his friends, but disobeyed to achieve some end that we would agree is morals. So I think a lot of the discourse around things like civil disobedience and disobedience within the military are around those questions of justification and what is at stake.

And that it's not just, I'm not going to pay my taxes because I want to buy more shoes. I think we would all look at that and say, yeah, no, that's not a good reason. Some of this is that these judgments are not individual judgments alone. They're also communal judgment. So I think that that's part of Part of it we would say Okay, yeah, Martin Luther King Jr. So more rights is a good reason to just obey, right?

How do you think we got How did you think we got to a place Where the police are not considering these questions Where it is about deference? I know that's a big question And it's kind of one of the ones we've been asking or everyone's asking themselves this week. How long do we have?

Yeah, I think there's a lot of things going on, right? So some people have talked a lot about the militarization of the police, which I view more as an issue of what is the culture of policing become, particularly since 9-11. And some of that perhaps has to do with the global war on terror and the, you know, diminishing boundaries between the military and the police where, you know, when people get out of the military, they're being hired onto police forces. And so bringing perhaps military sensibility to the police. But you also have, I think, a breakdown in a continue breakdown in social fabric, or if you talk to police officers, and I have former students who are police officers, they're asked to deal with all kinds of things.

things that perhaps they aren't equipped to deal with. They're they're called to stress calls where someone is mentally ill or whether there's domestic violence or where there's a homeless person. In other words, they're dealing with all of these really social problems, but you're bringing a person with a gun and perhaps a militarized and threat mentality into a context where the use of force might be their first option because of how they're trained, but that is not necessarily the best first option in that context. And it's the same argument and discussion we have with using the military

for military humanitarian interventions. If people are trained for combat, I mean, to go in and do something that isn't necessarily what we think of as conventional combat. And so I think this is something that both of those communities have struggled with. We also have, as we've talked about, you know, you have segments within both these communities where you have white supremacy, where you have what some people. I know people don't like the term toxic masculinity, but there is a certain culture of masculinity, which the research shows has toxic effects that can be part of policing. I have a gun, so you will give me respect because I have a gun as opposed to.

you give me respect because I've earned your trust as a member of the community, those kinds of things. So I think there's a lot of things going on. And some of it is what police are asked to do and asked to sort of deal with. And I also think they're sort of, I mentioned this, my social media feed in regard to something else. But Americans like the easy button. So the Staples commercial where it's the red button and you have a problem. problem. You can't solve it. You just hit the easy button. I think as an American society, we like the easy button. So when we don't know what to do, we call the police or

we send in the military. And so I think that's also kind of a larger problem. The police is designed, the policing is designed for a very specific kind of thing. And they are good for that thing. You know, when I've been raped or when someone has broken into my house or someone is holding me at gunpoint, like, that's who I should call because that is what they are for. You know, if my neighbor who is mentally ill or upset is shooting off fireworks in the street and not really endangering anyone, they may not be the best person to call. So some of it is also becoming more savvy about our social problems and stop trying to use the easy button for everything.

We need to be, you know, properly funding education and all kinds of health care and all kinds of social services in all communities. And police need to, and the police who are doing things well are engaged in community policing. They get to know the members of their community. They're part of the community. They're not, they don't view them as adversaries. I mean, I think that just the fact that many police officers refer to people like me as citizens. civilians is problematic. Right.

Because that's a language, that's a warfare language. Because we have civilians and we have, or non-tamboutens and we have combatants. And so for members of my community to refer to me in that way already sets up a relationship that is where there's separation between us and a certain mentality that I see, that I think we are seeing, you know, play out in all of. those horrible videos that are circulating on social media police brutality, right? There's no, you know, there's no reason for those. So I think that that's, I think there's lots of complicated reasons, and my sociologist colleagues could probably help us with understanding those reasons. But I think a lot of it just has to do with how the culture of policing has developed and

emerged, let's say, in the last 25, 30 years, which is a choice. We can undo that. We can change that. No, I think you're right. I think Rosa Brooks wrote a really great book, kind of about how, what was it called? How everything became war and the military became everything. Yeah.

Which is, you know, that she kind of says that in the modern war zones, American soldiers are asked to be lawyers with guns. Right. And that we've seen that trickle down into our communities, as these police officers, not only, like there are,

there's ex-military in them, they get a lot of military surplus. They look to the military kind of for, to set standards for them, yet they do not have near the amount of training or expertise that the American military does. And so, yeah, you end up, coupled with that.

I think I saw the, the chief of the, Dallas PD, I believe that was him saying that, kind of confirming that some of this is the problem, that, you know, they've been asked to do a bunch of things that would normally have been the purview of other parts of the community. Like now Dallas PD is being asked to like round up stray dogs. Why is that their job? Right. Yeah. That's, it's going to lead to all kinds of problems.

So I think that that kind of, I think you're right. a complicated, complicated issue of which these things are all parts, right? Absolutely. And there's just a dynamic of when someone with a gun shows up in a situation, right? Even if that's not your intention, right? That, you know, freaks people out. It produces certain reactions very quickly, which then if you are trained to respond to those kinds of reactions in a maximal kind of way, right? It's not, and take a genius to figure out how this is going to go south very quickly.

Right. Yeah, I think, and I'm sure not everyone will agree with me, but I think that there is an implicit threat of violence when there is a gun on someone's holster, whether that's, you know, and that also goes for all of the people marching around open carry in all parts of the country. People are afraid of you because there is an implicit threat of violence. you have a weapon that can take a life very easily, and that changes the dynamic of who you're interacting with. Right. It just does, whether you're a cop or a civilian. We are going to pause there for a break.

We'll be right back after this. Welcome back to War College. We are on with Pauline Corrin talking about her book on obedience. So at the beginning, we kind of talked about some pop culture examples, and I thought it would be, I would kind of interested to know, other than Antigone, trying to bury her poor brother. What else do you look at to kind of help frame this for people in the book? So I spent a fair amount of time looking at Henry, William Shakespeare's Henry V, because there was a famous dialogue in there where the night before the Battle of Adjian Court, some of the soldiers are actually questioning whether or not Henry has the just cause and unbeknownst. to them, he's in disguise in the discussion.

So there's this interesting kind of debate there. It's the undercover boss moment of Shakespeare. Yes, the undercover. And so that's sort of a classic scene, especially in terms of military obeisance. But we also have things like, you know, the classic film, a few good men where you have, you know, Jack Nicholson's character who basically, you know, tries to make the claim that, you know, I'm doing things you don't want to do. And so you need to sit down and be quiet civilians because you don't know what you're talking. He's sort of like the incarnation of Grossman's like that kind of sheepdog mentality, I think.

So there's several movies that I talk about in the film or in the book that can be useful in sort of thinking of these things. The fifth is a big one. Antigone is interesting, but also, you know, in the philosophical tradition, Socrates, at one point, is convicted and is sentenced to death and is given the chance to escape, and he refuses to do so. And he says to do so would be the disobedient to Athens at the state. So there's lots of, you know, different kinds of examples that you could look at. I think you lighted on one that I think is very interesting that I want to talk about a little bit more. And maybe you and I have already talked about this or Kevin and I have, which is possible, the Jack Nicholson, a few Goodman speech. Because I've never seen that, like that clip is taken out of context and reshared on Facebook walls across the damn country. and no one ever follows it up with

the immediate thing that happens afterward where he gets arrested. Right? Yeah. They're completely taking that speech out of context and not really understanding how he's the villain of that story, it seems.

Yeah. And it doesn't, you know, and I do talk about that at the end of the movie. Like the two of the Marines who were on trial. Like the younger one is sort of confused because they're convicted right he's like i don't i don't understand what happened and the older marines that's to him where marines it's our it was our job to protect the innocent to protect the weak

and we failed to do that right that's the closing moment of the film right that's the you know that's the clincher of the film and so then you read that back on nicholson's character yeah he's not the good guy right um and it you know his character is designed to demonstrate a certain kind of, you know, arrogance and insularity and the idea that because I am a member of the military, I can break rules, I can break laws, I can, you know, I don't have to. Because the trial is he's being asked to answer to the civilian or military justice. He's being asked to answer for his actions, and he basically pulls at Charles I first and says, yeah, I don't have to defend anything to you. and the justice system embodied by Tom Cruise's character. One of the views Tom Cruise, you know, characters I actually like,

basically says, actually you do have to answer to us, right? You work for us. We are your boss. And then the end of the movie has the two Marines coming back and, you know, articulating that what went wrong was that they failed to protect one of their own, But more importantly, they failed to protect someone who was weak and vulnerable. They failed in their moral obligation as Marine. So it's an interesting sort of juxtaposition, right?

But very often, as you said, that meme is shared to lift up of that sort of sheep dogs. Like, you know, you civilians are not fit to judge me, which is, of course, ridiculous because they work for us. you know if jackham nicholson were a real person like i pay his salary he works for me um so he does in fact have to answer to me so yeah so what you're saying is really interesting the way in which that particular meme and other ones like it um get used um i mean i think a better yeah i think a better uh film and i want i talk about a little bit in the book but not as much as i would like to is um is Bruce Willis's character in the film The Siege, which was made before 9-11,

but it basically asked the question of what would happen if there was a terrorist attack in New York. And there's... So, Denzel Washington and... Denzel Washington. Stanley Tucci, maybe? Not Stanley Tucci. I forgot an Anne's name, Anne's last name.

Bancroft. No, not Bancroft. No. I know here, I can see your face. Anyway, this is not interesting podcasting. Let's talk, but the siege is. But the siege is interesting because there's this, you know, there's an imposition of martial law, right?

And there's this conflict between Denzel Washington's character and Bruce Wallace's character. And Bruce Willis sort of is representing maybe a more nuanced view of the Jack and Nicholson character, sort of but a character who says to people, you don't want you don't want me to come in and you don't want to declare martial law because this is a blunt instrument and you know

you don't know what you're asking for so I think that's an interest so I wish people would like watch less of that meme or if they do watch the whole a few good men movie but then also watch the siege which is another sort of

you know there are questions of obedience and there too lots of questions of obedience there too and some of the same SivMil questions, but I think in a little more interesting and, you know, nuanced kind of way. Does this speak to as kind of something to go out on the military citizen duality

you talk about towards the end of the book? Yeah, it definitely does because, you know, part of what I talk about in the book is, you know, military. veteran exceptionalism, the idea that perhaps they look at themselves, some members of those communities look at themselves, and civilians might look at themselves as sort of super citizen, right? So, you know, the discourse around having vets run for Congress, which are certainly allowed to, there's this idea, well, you know, they are better suited to serve in Congress

to make judgments about national security because they've served, right? Well, well, Well, they may have a certain kind of expertise, but that's only one kind of expertise that a senator or a congressperson might need. So it's worth us thinking about, you know, what is the relationship between the military and the civilian communities and what are the conceptions of citizenship going on there? I'm not less of a citizen because I haven't served in the military. And so I think that there is a kind of danger.

is and you see this on a lot of social media pages. And anytime I weigh in on anything military, I will get sort of trolls and troll adjacent people usually male in my feed saying, A, your woman and be your civilian, sit down and be quiet. You don't know what you're talking about. You do not get to weigh in on whether we send up to Iran or whatever the issue of the day is. So I think there's a way that we need to start to reconceptualize the relationship between the military and the civilians.

And also civilians have an important role. I think people have ceded a lot of power to the military. There's a lot of deference to the military. Well, we'll let them decide what to do. And it's like, well, no, we have civilian control of the military for a reason. So, I mean, those are some of those issues. And that comes up in the movie The Seeds. there's a sort of a famous scene where Denzel Washington says,

this character says to Bruce Willis' character, you can't shred the Constitution to save it, right? And the point he's made there is we have to preserve these constitutional norms, even in this sort of moment of extremity. So, and I think that, you know, that certainly, although the film was made before 9-11, those of us who lived through 9-11 can see those themes there, still, you know, even in what's going on right now, I think they're sort of, you know, there's

echoes there. So it's a really great movie I wouldn't. It's a net Benning, I think. Yes. It's a, it's a net Benning and Tony Shaloobe. Yes, absolutely. And so there's interesting themes around ethnicity, too, because there's a question of, you know, Arab-American being rounded up. Well, they, yeah, they, it, just get people. kind of an idea, because nobody's seen this thing, unfortunately, because it was released in 1996, or 98, and it was a huge box office disaster. Yeah.

And the critics panned it. And it's, you go back and watch it now, and it's, uh, it's creepy. It's creepy. You're like, food. Yeah. Is Tony Shalub, I believe, plays an Arab FBI agent who is one of the people that is rounded up and put in an internment camp after an Islamic attack

in New York City, right? There's a lot of creepy parallels in that movie. Yeah. It just came out, you know, just a few years before. It's definitely worth, worthwhile, and there are these questions of obedience and professionalism and then, you know, all of those things.

So as much as I love a few good men, I think the siege is a more perhaps new treatments. And even Bruce Willis's character, who is sort of the bad guy, right, still has, I think, what is a more nuanced and complicated portrayal of that kind of character and that kind of perspective. So I definitely commend it to your viewers or to your listeners, sorry. All right. I think that's a good place to end. Pauline Corinne. Thank you so much for coming under the show and walking us through this complicated topic. The book is On obedience, contrasting philosophies for the military citizenry and community.

Thank you so much. Thank you. That's it for this week, War College listeners. War College is me, Matthew Galt, and Kevin Nodell, who's created by myself and Jason Fields. We will be back next week with more stories from behind the front lines. Stay safe until then.