"CAN'T" and "WON'T" Part Two Misfeasance and Malfeasance by JR McCarthy

Two score four in the classroom, and I have learned that the only essential distinction that a teacher needs to make is the distinction between the student who "can''t" and the student who "won''t." Woe be onto a teacher when circumstances do not allow the distinction to be made. What could be worse, after all, than punishing a child for the very incapacity that you are supposed to help him correct? Perhaps the only thing that could be worse is joining the ignominious chain of neglect and enabling that has fostered the "won''t do" attitude of a kid who could know better.

Two score four in the classroom, and I have learned
that the only essential distinction that a teacher needs
to make is the distinction between the student who
"can''t" and the student who "won''t." Woe be onto a
teacher when circumstances do not allow the
distinction to be made. What could be worse, after all,
than punishing a child for the very incapacity that you
are supposed to help him correct? Perhaps the only
thing that could be worse is joining the ignominious
chain of neglect and enabling that has fostered the
"won''t do" attitude of a kid who could know better.

In the classroom, it is fairly clear that this distinction is
necessary: In the real world, the distinction is often
difficult to perceive. This is precisely because the real
world is not a classroom: it is the never-ending test for
which the classroom was supposed to help to prepare
us. In the real world, if you can''t, it might as well be
because you won''t, and if you won''t, it might as well be
because you can''t.

Nevertheless, let us move away from the world of
school to the school of life, and let us designate that
"can''t", at the level of everyday performance, is a word
that denotes incompetence. Let us go a little further ?
getting a little darker as we go - and let us say that
"won''t", at the level of everyday performance, is a
harbinger of corruption. Let us now look around us,
and let us marvel at what havoc is wreaked, at every
level of society, by the incompetent people ? the
people who do not know how to do their jobs correctly
? and by the corrupt people ? the people who know
perfectly well what and how they must do, but will not
do what they must, or will not refrain from doing what
they must not do.

It appears to us that the fruits of incompetence and the
fruits of corruption are virtually identical. Long and
sorrowful experience shows one that they taste the
same as well ? same disagreeable aftertaste, same
toxic effect on the digestive tract. Logic may force one
to see that they are powerfully different, and thus
decency may urge that they be judged by different
criterion, but when it comes time to face the sickness
they have left in their wake, without close and careful
observation, it cannot always be determined, and
indeed it does not much seem to matter, whether
incompetence or corruption was the cause.

Before we can discern the fruits of incompetence from
the fruits of corruption, however, we need to learn how
to speak about them. Whence comes the language
that will articulate the subtle distinctions in virtually
identical fruits, even when they are known to have
sprung from demonstrably different trees? The
Eskimos have forty nine words for snow. The ancient
Greeks had three different words for love. When it
comes to the distinction between incompetence and
corruption, the wide and occasionally unruly English
language may serve us well. Here are two useful words
from the same etymological stalk: misfeasance and
malfeasance.

Misfeasance and malfeasance are very much the King''s
English: they take us back to the centuries following
the Norman Invasion, when the official language of the
British Court was not English but French. Misfeasance
comes from the French word "mesfaire" which means
"to do incorrectly". Malfeasance comes from the
French "malefaisance" which literally means "to do
maliciously". Misfeasance is more completely defined
as "the improper performance of a lawful act."
Malfeasance is more completely defined as "official
misconduct by one in a position of authority."

Police officers shoot and kill an unarmed man, and
they claim to have done so because they believed him
to be armed, and they believed that he meant to do
them harm: misfeasance or malfeasance? Were the
circumstances of the dead man''s presence at the
scene of the shooting beyond suspicion or reproach?
Was the dead man, in the cruel parlance of those who
kill for fun and profit "a sitting duck" - clearly without
motive or means to hurt others or defend himself from
harm? If the answer to these questions is no, we have
an incident of misfeasance. If the answer to both of
these questions is yes, we may very well be looking at
that most unambiguously evil of all crimes, cold-
blooded murder.

"Murder," Shakespeare''s Hamlet says, "though it hath
no tongue, will speak with most miraculous organ." It
could be that the Bard is thus suggesting that when a
sensible person of good will makes even a cursory
examination of the scene of a true crime, he might say
of murder what Potter Stewart famously said about
obscenity: "I know it when I see it. "

But what if the answer to the first question is "no", but
the answer to the other question is "yes"? What if the
dead man, although in fact unarmed and not
conspicuously dangerous, nevertheless aroused some
manner of suspicion in a rough neighborhood in the
wee hours of the morning? This is the point of agony,
because this is the point where we must probably say:
no malfeasance, but degrees of misfeasance on both
sides of the gun. Later on, when parties who should
know better agitate for lawful vengeance, and District
Attorneys who should certainly know better prosecute
errant cops for crimes that were not committed, it is
misfeasance all around.

Misfeasance abounds, and it compounds the tragedy
that young men die violently on the streets of our
cities. Misfeasance abounds, and it makes the police
afraid of the people, and the people afraid of the
police, which will pretty much guarantee that we will
keep having such tragedies, and harden our hearts
against each other. Misfeasance abounds, and if
there was no other reason for this to cause us dismay,
we could reflect on the malfeasance that has the
concealment of misfeasance as its motive, and the
punishment of
misfeasance as its excuse.

This would be a shameless act of nepotism on my part
if I was a person of any consequence, but I owe a
great deal of my understanding about the difference
between misfeasance and malfeasance to a wonderful
book called Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad. It
was written by Andrew C. McCarthy, who was an able
federal prosecutor in an able time, and who is a voice
for reason in a world that needs to stop being so
willfully irrational. Andrew C. McCarthy is also my big
brother, and after all these years, he is still willing to
protect me from bad men.

JR McCarthy is a published author and also a staff writer for ArtistsILove.com