When it is not fair to be “fair”

Have you ever had one of your kids tell you that something is not fair? Generally, they either mean that something has not gone their way, or–more often–they mean that somehow someone has not received exactly the same treatment that they received. Not being treated fairly can lead to a lot of childhood resentment. It can even make it all the way into adulthood. Many are the stories of the siblings who ended up in perpetual arguments because one of them thought that they had not been treated  fairly.

The problem is when that type of argumentation makes it into other areas of life, like our public discourse. You see, the problem is that fair is not necessarily always fair. My brother-in-law, studied to be a dentist. One time he expressed his frustration to my wife because he had to study all parts of anatomy and physiology alongside people who were going to be physicians. But, dentists do not need all that information, since they neither use it and are prohibited by law from practicing non-dental medicine. So, he asked, why did dentists have to learn all that unnecessary material. He claims that the only understandable answer that he received was that he had to do it because his teachers had had to do it.

One definition of being “unfair” is if someone is not required to do everything that the person was forced to do. That is, it does not matter if the action makes sense or not. If I had to do it, it is unfair if you do not have to do it. Can you see where this definition of fair tends to inhibit newer and better methods of training someone? As a veteran, I have heard other veterans talk about how today’s soldiers do not have to put up with everything that they had to put up with. But, today’s Armed Forces have training regimens based both on research into how to turn out better soldiers and the experience of multiple wars and training regimens. The aim of the Armed Forces is to turn out soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and coast guardsmen who will survive and survive successfully. So, it is true that today’s training methods are not the same as yesterday’s training methods. But the proof of the training methods is in the success of our Armed Forces. In fact, to define fair as meaning that you must undergo everything that I did is to guarantee that more reliable methods that give reliable positive results will never be adopted.

But, there are other similarly bad definitions of fairness. And those definitions strike not at training methods, but strike deeper into our very definitions of justice and mercy. Some have come out against any changes in the repayment of mortgages on the basis that change would not be fair to those who paid off their mortgages under the old methods. But, remember the example that I gave above from the Armed Forces. If the contract under which those mortgages were drawn was fundamentally flawed, then it may very well be that the only fair–that is, just–way to solve the crisis is to change the very contracts that govern the mortgages. In fact, the housing crisis has shown that the bases on which many of the loans were made were flawed. To simply say that the flawed foundation of these mortgages cannot be changed because it would not be fair to those who paid off mortgages under those flawed foundations is to simply argue that banks–and the public–will be forced to swallow tens of thousands of foreclosures, those people will lose their homes, and the banks, the country, and many individuals would suffer. In fact, that is just what has happened under a definition of fair that allows for no change.

All the way from England, and even before, we have received the concept of judicial mercy. That is, the idea of the King’s Pardon, or of other means of commuting sentences, has been part of our Judeo-Christian culture since before medieval times. That transferred to the USA Constitution and many state constitutions in the power that is given to the executive (president or governor) to either commute or pardon sentences and/or convictions. There is a long tradition of justice that considers that there are cases that fall outside the regular judicial courts that need the intervention of someone outside the court system to ensure that both justice and mercy reign in our system of government. However, note how many times since the 1980’s the commutations of sentences by a governor or by the President have been misused for strictly political purposes by claiming that any “amnesty” is somehow not fair to those who must serve their full sentences, or who must comply with every jot and tittle of the law. Thus, in this case, the word fair is used to trump centuries of Judeo-Christian tradition that says that if mercy is not part of justice, then justice is not justice. Here is the even sadder part. Many of the people who claim that commutations are not fair are also screaming that this country is supposed to be a Christian country. How little they know of Christianity!

More than that, there are the persons who claim that those in debt must repay their debt down to the last penny, otherwise this is not fair to those who have repaid their full debt. But, one of the reasons that the USA did away with debtor’s prison was that all too many of the immigrants to this country were indentured servants who were put under indenture until they should pay the full weight of their debt. That is, either under debtor’s prison or under indenture, the Founding Fathers considered it abhorrent that a person, and then his heirs, would be saddled with an unrepayable debt. Nevertheless, many of today’s modern Americans forget that heritage and insist that Congress must pass no plan under which the debt burden of the housing crisis, which was caused by untenable lending policies by the large banks, is reduced in such a way that it allows people to get out from under the crushing burden of their debt. It is not fair, right? In this case fairness can end up damaging both your neighbor, and the country, severely.

I could go on. But, please realize that many of the definitions of fair that are floating around this country are definitions that either have little base in Christianity or are definitions that would severely hamper this country’s ability to deal with its debt burden.