Bernstein is Right

David Bernstein and I have had our differences, usually over silly complaints on my part, but I think he clearly has the better of Mark Kleiman in their latest disagreement. It started with Bernstein's post appluading the death of Hamas leader Abdel Aziz:

Rantisi is brought to justice: "We will all die one day. Nothing will change. If by Apache or by cardiac arrest, I prefer Apache," he said. It's nice when cosmic justice and individual preferences can both be satisfied.

Kleiman responded (in a tone so rude and condescending that I think Bernstein should get credit for even taking it seriously):

Since there's no such thing as an ineducable student -- only an insufficiently skilled or diligent teacher -- I must attribute to some deficiency in my earlier exposition of the matter David Bernstein's failure to get the message that using military force to kill someone who might instead have been tried for criminal acts is not the same as bringing that person to justice.

Since my post failed to point out that it is bad manners to dance on the graves of one's recently slain enemies, I must also take responsibility for what I take to be Mr. Bernstein's appalling lapse in taste in making a joke about the death of Abdel Aziz Rantisi.

Now his first point is perhaps correct, but so marginal that it can't be the driving force behind such a pedantic post. It seems he objects not to the idea that "justice" was served, but that Rantisi was not "brought to justice," because there was no arrest and trial. Fine, maybe Bernstein should have said "justice is done" or something along those lines. Who cares?

The second point is, as Pejman has said, bizarre. In Pejman's comments section, Kleiman added this (alongside a strange reference to corpse desecration):

There's a big difference between, on the one hand, expressing the sober view that a particular person was a threat and that his removal is something to be pleased about, and, on the other, making him less than human by treating his demise as a matter for jest.

That's quite right. There is a difference. But Kleiman went farther than that in his original post, asserting that to make a joke about the death of one's sworn enemy, even when that enemy is an unrepentant murderer of civilians, is an "appalling lapse in taste."

I'm certainly not going to say that anyone should revel in any death. I myself am more likely to react in the way that Kleiman himself prefers, with a "sober view." But I'm also not prepared to say that those who react to such occasions with mild humor or other less sober forms of expression are doing something wrong. There has to be room for each of us to react to these situations differently. We each grieve and celebrate on our own terms, and I think it unjustifiedly self-righteous for someone to call another's harmless celebration "appalling."

Who is really the greater threat, after all: the man accused of hubris, or the man accusing everyone else of hubris and telling them how they should act instead?

UPDATE: Kleiman has posted an update, of which I think the last sentence adds the most to the dialogue:

One difference, I would have thought, between civilized adults one one hand and adolsecents and barbarians on the other is that civilized adults, having confronted the fact of their own mortality, don't take the deaths of others -- even necessary deaths -- lightly.

I think that is a good point, and I think it would have more force here if I thought that Bernstein was actually taking the death of Rantisi lightly. If we were discussing gleeful mockery on the part of someone who thought matters of life and death were just a game, I can see where the humor would seem distasteful. Not distasteful per se, but because it reflected a lack of seriousness, a lack of perspective concerning the matter.

That's not the case here, however. If there is one thing David Bernstein should certainly not be accused of, it would be making light of the violence in Israel. I think he has demonstrated repeatedly how seriously he takes the issue (sometimes too seriously, in my opinion), and as such I don't think making a joke about Rantisi's death raises any doubts about his recognition that these are serious matters. In fact, I thought it was a nice touch for him to offer brief humor rather than, as one might expect from him, a more serious and extended discussion of the implications of the event. He just seemed to be saying: a bad man is dead. That is good. Smile.