Justice and the Road to Nowhere

How to define justice is problematic for philosophers.  For the non-philosophic, it is less of a problem.  Justice is fairness.  It is the application of the golden rule: treat others as we would like to be treated. In Plato’s Republic, Socrates kept challenging is friends to define justice.  Polemarchus said justice is giving to each what he is owed. Thrasymachus said justice is the advantage of the stronger. None of the definitions held up well to Socratic examination. Thrasymachus got frustrated when Socrates refused to offer his own definition, perhaps because, among groups of people, justice is illusive. Here is a good example from Southern Appalachian history.

The Road to Nowhere begins in Bryson City and winds across the lower ridges of the Smoky Mountains.  Just past Swain County High School, it enters the Great Smoky Mountain National Park, traverses forested slopes overlooking Fontana Lake, crosses Nolan Creek and ends at a tunnel.  Barricades block motor traffic from the tunnel, but not hikers, horseback riders or teenage graffiti artists. Hikers enter into a fading light that slides away until footsteps and trickling water echo through darkness. The motionless air smells of mold and horse manure. Guided by a frame of daylight at the far end, hikers slowly regain decades of graffiti accumulated at the exit and emerge into the forest.

The tunnel is a threshold between the man-made and the nature-made.  At the exit of the tunnel, the Road to Nowhere ends.  Travelers must walk or ride horseback into a vast region of mountains and streams.  Hardy travelers pass each other, their cross-purposes subdued by the harmonic sounds of a modern wilderness. The forest at the end of the Road to Nowhere has not always been a wilderness and will never be what it once was. Scarred by the rusted remains of conflicts, the Smoky Mountains is a classroom and a laboratory for human culture and science.  Nature lost control centuries ago.

The history goes way back. In 1776, the mountains now encompassing a national park existed within a vast Cherokee homeland. After the Declaration of Independence, colonial militia in western Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina attacked and burned every Cherokee village in the Little Tennessee valley.

For 50 years, Cherokee territory shrunk as white settlers encroached from every direction. By 1838, when U.S. army troops rounded up 16,000 Cherokee, they were a tired and defeated people.  They marched compliantly along the Trail of Tears, an 800-mile walk to Oklahoma. Disease, exposure and starvation killed 4000 Cherokee.  Four hundred Cherokee hid out in the remote mountains and another 600 Cherokee, who had gained state citizenship through intermarriage with white settlers, remained behind.  These 1000 Cherokee became the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. They now live along the southern edge of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park.

A hundred years after displacing the Cherokee from their native lands, in order to create the national park and Fontana Lake, the federal government displaced several thousand white citizens who had lived in the Smokies since the Cherokee removal. Fontana Lake displaced 1300 families and cut off road access to upstream farms, churches and 33 family cemeteries.  In 1943 the federal government promised to build a road around the north shore of the lake to provide access to the cemeteries.  By 1969 six miles of the road were built, including the tunnel, but funds for the continuation of the road dried up.  For the next 40 years, the displaced families fought with the federal government and environmentalist over the completion of the road.  Environmentalist wanted to preserve the backcountry of the new park.  Families demanded the deliverance of the road and access to their cemeteries. 

Both white and Cherokee people who live around the boundary of the national park see little purpose in government. Money does not buy justice. Victims are nameless and faceless. They are citizens subsumed by the larger citizenry.  

I had an intimate encounter with the cultural conflicts of the Smokies when two fishing buddies and I hired a couple of Cherokee Indians to pack our camping and fishing gear into the backcountry. After fishing for three days in an area where the horses couldn’t go, we met our Cherokee friends in a campsite where horses were allowed. They had a big tent and a tarp that covered a portable table, a two burner stove and a campfire. They had beer chilling in the creek, liquor, jars of moonshine and marijuana. A big pot of chili was cooking on the stove and cornbread baked in a Dutch oven on bed of coals. The Cherokee shared their riches with the less than successful fishermen.

We spent a rowdy night swapping tales and jokes about day hikers in expensive clothes carrying binoculars and bird books. The white boys’ stories fell far short of Cherokee bravado and contempt for regulations. They carried an axe and chainsaw to keep the trails clear for their horses and to provide firewood. One claimed to be a chronic poacher, once paying a $1200 fine for a bag of ginseng – a dollar per plant. “F____g judge, it’s our woods.  We were here first,” he said. The other once paid a fine for cruelty to animals.  His horse had broken a leg in the backcountry.  Lacking a gun, he put the horse down by slitting his neck. A passer-by reported him to the warden. “F_____g judge, what was I supposed to do – leave the horse there to be mauled by bears?”

When the Cherokee got us back to the other side of the tunnel, two Harley Davidson motorcycles roared through the parking lot and stopped in front of the barricade. The motorcycles shut down.  Two guys and a girl got off the Harleys. The girl pulled a video camera out of bag and walked past the trailer where the horses were tethered and toward the entrance to the tunnel. 

In a few minutes, she returned. “I didn’t see nobody in the tunnel,” she said.

“Did you walk to the other end?” the older man asked.

“No, I ain’t walking through that tunnel.”

“It don’t matter,” the younger guy said, “I’m going.” He cranked the Harley and started rolling toward the barricade.

One of the Cherokee yelled, “Hey . . . hey, you can’t drive that cycle through that tunnel.

The motorcycle stopped and the driver looked back.

“What’s your problem?” the older man asked.

“He can’t drive that god-damned motorcycle through the tunnel.  You see that barricade.  It’s there for a reason.  The U.S. Park Service don’t allow it.”

“I don’t see anybody from the park service around here,” the older man said.

“You can’t drive that motorcycle through the tunnel,” he yelled again.

The girl with the camera walked up. “People do it all the time.  I saw the videos on You Tube.  You should hear the roar of the engine in the tunnel.”

“You can’t drive that motorcycle through the tunnel,” the Cherokee yelled as he looked at his horses.

“We rode all the way up here from South Carolina, just to ride through that tunnel.”

“Well you ain’t riding through that tunnel today.”

The older man looked at the Cherokee, then looked at the horses.  He walked over to his friend with the motorcycle still idling.  They talked for a moment. The girl got on the bike. The younger guy looked at the Cherokee and then roared away from the barricade back toward Bryson City. The girl gave the Cherokee the finger.

“We’ll come back later,” the older man said as he pulled away on his cycle. 

“Dumb ass bikers,” the Cherokee said.  “Those horses would never ’ve gone near that tunnel again.”

I don’t think much of the needs of those three Harley folks. But in the long history of the Smoky Mountains lies a problem for justice – whatever it is. How do we provide it for the groups that comprise the larger group? Who makes the laws?  Who appoints the judge? To provide for white settlers, we displaced the Indians. To preserve a scenic view and memory of nature, we displaced their ancestors. I am certainly a beneficiary of that displacement. We required a few thousand to sacrifice for millions – the greatest good for the greatest number. Justice aspires to work that way. But in some events and from some points of view, Thrasymachus was right. Justice is the advantage of the stronger.