The Sounds of Silence
KRISTOL, WILLIAM
The Sounds of Silence by William Kristol Where is the outrage? It's there, all right. Most Americans were disgusted and appalled and angered by the O.J. verdict. But moral outrage at the sight of...
...But I'm not sure any of us knew until last week just how vast is the gulf between enlightened opinion and Americans' common sense and common moral feeling...
...Justice was denied...
...With a few honorable exceptions-the column by Washington Post sports columnist Michael Wilbon the day after the verdict comes to mind- ordinary Americans found little voice given to their most deeply felt and deeply held moral judgments...
...But moral outrage at the sight of a murderer walking free is apparently not a respectable sentiment in polite society...
...Madison understood this: "Justice is the end of government...
...The New York Times editorialist, for one, chose to focus almost exclusively on the "bungling" and "flaws" of the Los Angeles Police Department, and noted the trial's deficiencies as well...
...Today's Madisonian Republican revolution in Washington is, I think, altogether for the good...
...The Journal doesn't usually spend a lot of time speculating on what "important message" federal regulators or Congressional tax-hikers are trying to send...
...The Times's only acknowledgment that something more might have happened, that we might have witnessed an elemental and grotesque injustice, was a passing reference to "a tragedy of errors...
...It is the end of civil society...
...What happened was a disgrace...
...But the Americans I've talked to-the Americans the Post worries might be so unsophisticated as to question all "the protections afforded defendants in American courts"-these American aren't "disappointed...
...At least not on the opinion pages of America's leading newspapers the day after the verdict, where almost nothing approaching an expression of outrage was to be found...
...Nor do they share USA Today's view that "too many compelling subplots remain incomplete...
...It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit...
...Most Americans aren't...
...They know that it's hard to prevent the trial of a celebrity from becoming a spectacle sickeningly inappropriate to the gravity of the crime...
...But of course what happened was no tragedy, in which justice was helpless...
...This is not a healthy thing...
...all of this "left a stigma on criminal justice which could take years to repair...
...Even conservative editorialists seemed to think it would be inappropriate to say what everyone in fact felt...
...Moral outrage can turn into indiscriminate rage if it is denied appropriate expression and, ultimately, effect...
...Have the enlightened elements of American society become incapable of speaking simple truths or expressing straight-forward moral judgments...
...Oh really...
...If the moral indignation at injustice that necessarily accompanies an attachment to justice is mocked and frustrated, the attachment to justice wanes-or the pursuit of justice takes an illiberal and dangerous path...
...Of course they know that occasionally a murderer will go free in an imperfect judicial system...
...Meanwhile, a murderer parties in L.A., and chats with Larry King on CNN...
...They're indignant...
...The Washington Post, meanwhile, judiciously and even-handedly ruminated on the case's "baggage"-baggage that made it "probably inevitable that millions of observers would have been disappointed no matter how the case came out...
...But unless it can engender or invite a broader intellectual, moral, and social reformation, it will be in vain...
...They know there is a gulf between the races...
...They even know that most editorial pages are congenitally timid...
...For them, the verdict was all too complete in its denial of justice to the Brown and Goldman families, and in its mockery of all who teach their children that murder is wrong, and that crime doesn't pay...
...The Wall Street Journal thought "we would be fools not to see that the Simpson jury is trying to tell this country something important...
Vol. 1 • October 1995 • No. 5
