Ponders private vice and public virtue

...Still another meaning is found in the usage "social order," with its connotations of "structure," "hierarchy," and "stability...

...MURRAY HAUSKNECHT is a longtime contributor to Dissent...

...One obvious reason why is that almost everyone agrees that some conduct is immoral, for example, marital infidelity, even though there are no great expectations that everyone will observe the norms governing sexual behavior...

...In all societies, whether democratic or highly authoritarian ones like China, officials and the police are responsible for controlling "disorderly conduct" or maintaining peaceful, law-abiding behavior...

...When official policies target the sources of public fears and anxieties, questions about political virtue seem either irrelevant or a threat to public safety...

...As a result of a fedDISSENT / Spring 1999 • 93 NOTEBOOK eral court order the parade took place "[h]emmed in by a throng of police on foot and on scooters...

...About a month before the Beijing incident Khallid Abdul Muhammad, a former aide to Louis Farrakhan, applied for a permit to hold the Million Youth March in Harlem during the Labor Day weekend...

...On September 9,1998, Joan Robinson, the United Nations Human Rights Commissioner, was to deliver a speech at the Beijing Hilton on "democracy and freedom...

...The mayor's first explanation of the police action was that they had "moved in to enforce a strict timetable" calling for the four o'clock ending...

...The city denied the permit a week before the scheduled date on the grounds that it would interfere with traffic, although that same month traffic was banned from Wall Street to City Hall for the Yankees' victory parade...

...After a month's delay permission was denied, and written guidelines for City Hall security were issued "that justified the city's use of the property for certain extraordinary events, including celebration of military triumphs, local sports teams and space exploration...

...Promptly at four, just as Muhammad was finishing his speech, "a phalanx of officers in riot helmets" stormed the speaker's platform as a police helicopter swooped down over the crowd...

...Although no one hesitates to label Clinton's "inappropriate behavior" as "immoral," no one speaks of Giuliani's actions in terms of morality or as a failure of "character...

...the mayor who would deny protesters their rights undermines the political order...

...it was a challenge to the existing discriminatory social structure...

...The legacy of the history of American politics is an electorate that considers itself ahead of the game if its officials steer clear of "corrupt practices," such as taking bribes or soliciting kickbacks...

...Eventually, as a result of a court order, a permit was issued allowing the rally in Harlem from noon to 4:00 p.m...

...Almost immediately after that parade an AIDS organization, Housing Works, requested permission for a parade and use of the steps to commemorate World AIDS Day...

...people attacking the police who are protecting us from criminals...

...Chu Hailan, the wife of an imprisoned dissident, was waiting in the lobby to speak to her on behalf of her husband...

...It is perhaps too much to expect elected officials to actively help opponents who question their legitimacy and oppose their policies, but a critical test of political virtue occurs when promoters of antidemocratic ideologies or protesters of police brutality attempt to exercise their rights...

...CHU HAILAN and the American protesters live in vastly different social and political worlds...

...In his election campaigns Giuliani has played upon fears of crime and the need to improve the "quality of life...

...That term has many overlapping connotations...

...the end she seeks is also different from their ends and there are obvious differences between a Khallid Abdul Muhammad and the other American protesters...

...Giuliani's refusal to issue the Million Youth March permit was not an isolated event...

...The following week the City Hall steps were again used as part of the parade for the John Glenn space mission, which again blocked traffic from Wall Street to City Hall...

...In mid-August the police department embarked on Operation Bravo to counter possible terrorist attacks...

...Neither place is easily accessible from Harlem or, for that matter, any other place in the city...

...Private sexual encounters, even if conducted in the Oval Office, do no damage to democracy...

...Public protests of police brutality and demands for the use of City Hall steps when they are forbidden question the power of the authorities and the legitimacy of their orders, and prohibiting the demonstrations is even more effective than marginalizing them on an island in the middle of the East River or in the Bronx...

...The same low expectations influence moral evaluations of official conduct...

...But before she had a chance to approach the commissioner she was grabbed by police and security guards who "bundled her, screaming through the lobby" to a police station...

...Guidelines like these are routinely and strictly enforced in authoritarian and totalitarian regimes...

...That is to say, public virtue merely consists of avoiding criminal acts...

...The mayor's actions deserve more attention than they have attracted, because, though less titillating, they raise the same questions of character and morality and are more consequential for the integrity of a political democracy than the president's misbehavior...

...The problem democratic authorities face is that the rights of free speech and assembly oblige them to permit political action challenging the social order and their own legitimacy—action which at the same time creates the conditions for "disorderly conduct...

...The squeegee men are on the same continuum of fear with demagogues like Khallid Abdul Muhammad whose anti-Semitic and anti-white rantings arouse the same anxieties...

...Reporters and television cameras were also herded into a barricaded pen...

...and homosexuals...

...The fear of crime, the unsympathetic people he targets"trouble-makers" all—and his desire to improve the quality of life lead to approval rather than condemnation of Giuliani's actions...

...Housing Works successfully sued the city, and on December 1 fewer than two hundred demonstrators gathered in front of City Hall "where they were confronted by metal detectors and a phalanx of police officers and corralled behind steel barricades" with a police helicopter hovering above them...

...Recall the accusation against Chu Hailan: "she was disturbing order at the hotel...

...that's what police are for...

...One of his first acts on taking office was ordering the police to crack down on the squeegee men who, without asking, cleaned the windshields of stopped cars and then solicited a tip...

...In one sense order means predictable or routine action as in the "orderly procedures" of a bureaucracy...

...Yet it is the public morality of officials rather than their private vices that is the pertinent issue...

...Less obviously, perhaps, the same challenge to the existing order was present in the other demonstrations...

...It is not surprising, therefore, that in both Beijing and New York the initial impulse of the authorities is to identify and guard against possible disturbers of the peace...

...In democracies the problem of maintaining order is more difficult...

...Despite all the blather about how Clinton has damaged "family values," Giuliani is the more subversive figure...

...In the preceding January a series of delays in issuing a permit to the Million Marijuana March Organization for a May parade up Fifth Avenue forced a cancellation of the event...

...blacks...

...Any large public gathering, whether a large crowd at the scene of an accident, a political protest, or a St...

...In September the October 22 Coalition asked for a parade permit so that it could participate in a nationwide protest against police brutality...

...All of these meanings come into play in the responses to trouble makers...

...The Giuliani story begins, curiously enough, with a Times report from Beijing...

...in democracies the virtuous official protects the freedom of citizens and attempts to extend the rights of free speech and assembly to the widest possible degree...

...it was one of a series of denials of parade permits...

...There are, of course, no easy answers, but the difficulties should not obscure the pertinence of the problem...

...In addition to the fear of crime, there are the prejudiced perceptions of the people involved: the squeegee men who are among DISSENT / Spring 1999 • 95 NOTEBOOK the undeserving poor...

...But what is the morality or public virtue we expect of officials in the course of carrying out their duties...

...Interestingly, in his crusade against sex shops NOTEBOOK Giuliani has tried to push those establishments to "remote, city-sanctioned zones" on the city's waterfront and industrial areas...

...attorney who had prosecuted Wall Street whitecollar criminals, called the court "an imperial Federal Court" and accused federal judges of thinking "that they are put there by God...

...Although political protesters have had to take him to court, his refusals to issue permits were not crimes...

...Later he and Police Commissioner Howard Safir claimed that the police moved only after they were pelted by bricks, bottles, and other debris...

...More significantly, officials like Giuliani also benefit from the public's ambivalence about some kinds of positive action...

...They may gather in easily accessible spaces only for "celebration[s] of military triumphs, local sports teams and space exploration...

...But Giuliani represents a more difficult case...

...Free speech and assembly are rights designed to promote the widest possible participation in a society's political life, and it is, therefore, the duty of public officials to facilitate access to the public arena...

...IT IS NOT difficult to pinpoint private immorality...

...By attempting to contain the rally at, literally, the margins of the city, Giuliani, intentionally or not, was protecting the existing social order...

...Later a Foreign Ministry spokesman stated, "Security guards removed a woman from the entrance of the Hilton Hotel because she was disturbing order at the hotel...

...Though few of them were menacing figures, they were a distinct annoyance and part of a generalized anxiety about crime...

...Giuliani, denouncing Muhammad's anti-Semitism and racism, refused a permit for a Harlem site and proposed that the rally be held either on Randalls Island underneath the Triborough Bridge or Van Cortlandt Park in the northern reaches of the Bronx...

...But the similarities go deeper...

...But the purpose of the rally was to mobilize and encourage political action...

...It is easy to see that the accusation of "disturbing order" implicitly contains the more serious charge that Chu Hailan was endangering the existing social and political structure...

...Focusing on the sexual peccadillos of politicians rather than their official conduct deflects attention from the real question of morality and politics: what are the moral standards that should govern behavior in public office...

...There are, of course, the easy instances—the selling of offices, acceptance of bribes—that are prohibited by law...

...This is not much different from asserting that the police in Harlem were protecting citizens from "a hate monger who came here to cause trouble...

...City Hall was surrounded with concrete barriers and news conferences typically held on its steps were banned...

...All of them, nonetheless, have one thing in common: they are trouble makers, people who in the eyes of authority are actual or potential disturbers of "order...

...Few officials, of course, ease the way for political protesters, but those who do are exemplars of public virtue...

...Giuliani clearly failed this test...

...lying about "inappropriate behavior" is a good example...

...Entangled in both these connotations is order as a "command" and the expectation of obedience...

...The steps, however, were the scene of the final ceremonies of the Yankees' parade...

...His attempts to block political protests are more subversive of a democratic order than Clinton's sexual behavior, but no one claims that he is thereby unfit for public office...

...Giuliani, a former U.S...

...It may be argued, further, that officials are obliged to make it easy for political gatherings of all sorts to take place...

...Closely related to this sense is order as law94 n DISSENT / Spring 1999 abiding behavior and the respect for authority that are absent in a "disorderly classroom...

...As Tiananmen Square demonstrated, any public protest in China is, by definition, a threat to social order...

...On the other hand, he has attempted to use the powers of his office to prohibit legitimate political protest and assailed the judges who have called him to account...

...Muhammad's antidemocratic ideology clearly justifies Giuliani's denunciation of him...

...In March the Coalition Against Police Brutality requested permission for a parade, but the request was denied the day before the planned date of the event...

...Patrick's Day parade, contains the seeds of possible "disorderly conduct," and a political protest like the Harlem rally increases the chances for disorder...

...The same subtext is not too hard to discern in the case of the Million Youth March and its leader...

...These low expectations may explain the lack of "outrage" over Clinton's behavior...

...Political protest, like pornography, must be kept far from susceptible publics...

...At a press conference on September 9, the same day Chu Hailan was dragged from the Beijing Hilton for "disturbing order," Safir explained "that a hate monger who came here to cause trouble was not allowed to do that, and the citizens of this city were protected from people who wanted a riot and did not have one...

...Public virtue consists of more than passively meeting the legal obligations of office...