GEOGRAPHICAL MORALITY AND THE CONSTITUTION

Edmund Burke is a historical hero of mine. Born in Ireland, he was raised Protestant and after graduating from Trinity College Dublin Burke moved to London where he traveled in literary and political circles. Eventually he was elected to Parliament and also became a renowed political theorist. Believing in the power of history, tradition, and precedent to guide one’s actions, Burke was a cautious reformer, yet he supported American grievances in the colonies as fighting for the rights of all Englishmen (but not the actual revolution), advocated for equal rights for Catholics, and detested government corruption.

Recently, as I was reading a book on British colonial history, I came across a new term for me- geographical morality- which the author claimed is associated with Burke. So, I researched the term further and found that geographical morality is indeed Burkean but not exclusively his. Nevertheless, Burke used geographical morality in two related ways.

The first use of geographical mortality for Burke was in his harsh, but right, criticism of the French Revolution. Burke believed that the foundation of any nation or society rested in traditions, customs, and institutions developed throughout its history and are expressed in its moral and political values. Thus, he found the radical and abstract reforms occurring in France to be repulsive which he expressed in his book Reflections on the Revolution in France. Burke understood the difference between the American grievances and the French actions as Americans were protesting what they considered deviations from historical rights while the French were engaging in societal upheaval by completely jettisoning their long-established political and moral foundation.

For Burke, geographical morality shifts from abstract political theory to a concrete manifestation of the term. The specific case here is the impeachment trial of Warren Hastings for corruption. Hastings was a chief agent for the East India Company, chartered by Parliament as an early version of a public-private partnership, which governed most of contemporary India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Myanmar in the name of the British Crown. In such an arrangement, Hastings was Governor General of Bengal.

Burke as the chief prosecutor against Hastings during the trial accused Hastings of cultural relativism in that he conspired to “…to have formed a plan of geographical morality, by which the duties of men, in public and private situations, are not to be governed by their relation to the great Governor of the Universe, or by their relation to mankind, but by climates…latitudes; as if, when you crossed the equinoctial, all the virtues die…by which they unbaptize themselves of all that they had learned in Europe…This geographical morality we do protest against…”

Burke further added, “…that the laws of morality are the same everywhere, and that there is no action which would pass for an act of extortion, of peculation, of bribery, and of oppression in England, that is not an act of extortion, of peculation, of bribery, and oppression in Europe, Asia, Africa, and all the world over…”

To counter the claims by many that Burke’s argument was some case of Western imperialist thought, Matthew Stephenson of Harvard Law School counters, “Now, there is of course some truth to the claim that the meaning of corruption varies across times and places, but I’ve always thought the claim that corruption is a modern Western notion, with minimal applicability, to developing/non-Western societies, was both factually inaccurate and hinged with a bit of cultural condescension masquerading as cultural sensitivity”

Although Hastings was acquitted of all charges, Burke’s wisdom on avoiding geographical morality in the 18^th century is applicable not only to contemporary colonial and imperial administrators but only to business executives, missionaries, and NGO leaders. There is yet another area of application of Burke’s wisdom on this matter.

As I began my research on geographical morality, I immediately thought of a concept I learned from my American history textbook in Afton (OK) High School (yes, high school!) and have since found nowhere else. That concept is posed in the form of a question- “Does the Constitution follow the Flag?” And it deals with the dilemma posed by American expansionism beyond our continental borders with new territories such as Guam, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, the Philippines, and American Samoa and whether constitutional rights and protections such as the Bill of Rights automatically applies to those inhabitants or must these rights and protections be explicitly granted to them by the Congress.

While most of the debate has focused on territories acquired during the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, I also now believe through the influence of my long passed mentor Edmund Burke the Constitution should also follow the Flag in countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq when they are occupied by US forces such as they were in the early 21^st century.

With no formal declaration of war, the issues can become quite complex. But not so complex we cannot do the right thing by jettisoning the concept of geographical morality rightly hated by Burke and others centuries ago and extend constitutional rights and protections to folks through no fault of their own find themselves under American control, even only temporarily. We cannot repeat our failures from the waterboarding of Filipinos in the early 1900s to the humiliations suffered at the Abu Ghraib Prison in the early 2000s.