Posted on 10/23/2001 1:54:33 PM PDT by UB355
Kathleen is a person of peace.(Oh Please, but now you know what follows)
And, recently, that has earned her a lot of conflict.
She is a member of a small minority of Americans who believe our nation should not conduct a military war on terrorism - just a financial and diplomatic one. According to recent polls, she and her kindred spirits account for less than 15% of our citizenry.
Lately, she has begun to feel that the war on terrorism is, to some degree, being waged against people like her, as well as al-Qaida.
"I've been screamed at, called a 'traitor' and, in one instance, threatened with physical violence," she explained, her voice burdened with sadness.
What has Kathleen done to deserve these verbal assaults? Burned the American flag? Marched in anti-war demonstrations? Defended bin Laden?
Courage of convictions
None of the above. During conversations with family, neighbors and co-workers, she has quietly and respectfully expressed her opinion that war is not the answer.
"In America right now, being a voice for peace requires more courage than it did a few weeks ago," she reflected.
Throughout her 50-some years, Kathleen's heroes have not been generals, warriors or CIA agents. Instead, she has looked to the likes of Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., John Lennon and Jesus Christ, to name a few.
These proponents of non-violent action, while still publicly admired (and, in the case of Christ, religiously worshipped), have not been invoked a great deal since Sept. 11. Their messages of peace and reconciliation have largely disappeared in a fog of rage.
"I understand better now why so many peacemakers have been persecuted or assassinated," Kathleen explained. "The need for vengeance is very strong in some human hearts, and someone who tries to pacify that need often becomes its next target."
"Do you consider yourself a patriot?" I asked her.
"Very much so," she replied. "I love this country deeply. It has its problems, but it is a nation of high ideals and hope."
What does it take?
"What do you think being a patriot requires?" I wondered.
"There's more to it than sticking an American flag on your car," she answered. "If you truly believe in what this country stands for - liberty and equality - then you respect and protect the right of your fellow citizens to disagree with your point of view."
I recalled the anthems on the home front during the Vietnam War: "My country, right or wrong, but my country," along with "Love it or leave it." Once again a debate rages in media circles and on street corners about political dissent during times of armed conflict.
Some argue that speaking out against military action while the nation's troops are in peril aids and abets our enemies and undermines morale. Others maintain that suppressing freedom of speech plays into the hands of the terrorists, helping them achieve the objective of subverting the world's greatest democracy.
"It doesn't surprise me that people don't agree with me and that they want to debate me," Kathleen explained. "I welcome that. What surprises and disappoints me is that they attempt to intimidate me into silence."
By definition, patriotism is love of one's country and what it stands for. A big part of what America stands for is freedom of speech, the right to disagree with the majority without being harassed or silenced.
Patriotism is not about intolerance and repression.
Terrorism is.
Contact Philip Chard at (262) 547-3986, e-mail him at pschard@earthlink.net, or visit his Web site at www.healingnature.com. Appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Oct. 23, 2001.
After visiting the website of the columnist, I think 'Kathleen' is more than likely a fictitious composite of the columnist's ideal thinking, feeling pacifist.
These proponents of non-violent action, while still publicly admired (and, in the case of Christ, religiously worshipped),...."
Depending on your definition of 'religion', these have ALL been religiously worshipped. 'Kathleen' is more apt to be the columnist's Harvey, the white rabbit, than a 'real' representative of the 15% taking odds with the 'War on Terrorism', IMHO.
You are right, and, so too, do the majority of we protector, not aggressor, 'hawks'; which, under God, has kept us in victory thus far.
An essay from a few weeks back on exactly that subject:
Rational views won't do now
by Paul Campos, Denver Rocky Mountain News
In the summer of 1941, George Orwell wrote a prescient essay titled, Wells, Hitler and the World State. The essay criticized the faith in scientific rationalism of H.G. Wells, who spent much of his life advocating the creation of some sort of world state. Wells envisioned a rationalist utopia, in which such anachronisms as patriotism, religious belief and fanaticism of every kind would be eliminated, and replaced by a future of gleaming steel skyscrapers, supersonic airplanes, a seamless global economy, and a pleasure-seeking culture not all that different from the one satirized in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. This vision of the future, which was extremely common among Western intellectuals in the early years of the 20th century, largely failed to survive the insane carnage of World War I, and the even bigger slaughter of the 1930s and 1940s. But Wells' faith in "progress" remained unshaken, even as the Nazi armies were sweeping across Europe. Orwell was exasperated by this attitude, which he attributed to the general unwillingness of liberal intellectuals such as Wells to face up to what actually motivates human beings.
"Hitler," Orwell pointed out, "is a criminal lunatic, and Hitler has an army of millions of men . . . for his sake a great nation has been willing to overwork itself for six years, and then to fight for two more, whereas for the common sense, essentially hedonistic worldview which Mr. Wells puts forward, hardly a human creature is willing to shed a pint of blood." What Wells failed to grasp was that "the energy that actually shapes the world springs from emotions -- racial pride, leader worship, religious belief, love of war -- which liberal intellectuals mechanically write off as anachronisms, and which they have usually destroyed so completely in themselves as to have lost all power of action."
Orwell, who was one of the first people to recognize there was no real difference between Hitler and Stalin, was also one of the few intellectuals in the English-speaking world who grasped the nature of the essential forces that helped bring such men to power. "Nationalism, religious bigotry and feudal loyalty are far more powerful forces that what [Wells] would describe as sanity. Creatures out of the Dark Ages have come marching into the present, and if they are ghosts they are at any rate ghosts that need a strong magic to lay them."
The kind of shallow optimism and naivete Orwell skewered enjoyed a major revival in the last couple of decades of the 20th century. In recent years, much of American politics has come to be based on the assumption that the rest of the world would eventually agree that the point of life was to acquire ever-larger televisions and sport utility vehicles. We have just been reminded that the adherents of militant Islam cleave to a worldview that, from the perspective of a Western rationalist, is indistinguishable from paranoid schizophrenia.
Although Wells has been dead for many decades, his attitude lives on. Consider Susan Sontag's complaint that the media coverage of last week's attack was "infantilizing," because it reduced a complex issue to a jingoistic confrontation of good against evil. This is the characteristically clueless reaction of an intellectual who, despite her formidable IQ, will never understand how the world actually works. By contrast, politicians and journalists both understand almost instinctively that it is not advisable to attempt to enter into a sympathetic understanding of your enemy's perspective as you are preparing to kill him.
What ultimately defeated Hitler was not faith in reason or a vision of an ever-more luxurious future, but rather, in Orwell's words, "the atavistic emotion of patriotism, the ingrained feeling of the English-speaking peoples that they are superior to foreigners." And that, in the long run, is what will defeat the forces of militant Islam.
Paul Campos is a professor of law at the University of Colorado. He can be contacted at paul.campos@colorado.edu.
http://www.gotlaughs.com/funpages/bin2.swf
I did a search and didn't find it. Let me know if this works
Uh, I think that's less than 5% actually...
Exactly my point, thanks.
Among the greater set of peace protesters are a large number who, no matter how carefully they choose there words, or how good their intentions, say that 'Historically, American actions lead to the September 11 attacks' (or in other words, America brought this upon itself). I've heard so many people rightfully call this treason.
Now here is my point:
with such strong faith in 'passive resistance', why do peaceniks not AUTOMATICALLY, INSTANTLY AND FORCFULLY point out that Osama bin Laden is a halfwit for not using the methods of Gandhi?!
It is this, I believe, that is at the crux of our frustration with peace movements, and their insistence that their opinions are 'patriotic' in a democratic society (where free debate really is so important).
It should escape no one that you can openly condemn Al Qaeda/bin Laden for not using non-violent protest, and still maintain your extremist views on 'the relevance of select moral values vs. violence'.
Instead peace groups seem to me to marginalise Al Qaeda’s indiscriminate violence by saying 'any killing of innocents is wrong - BUT...'. By failing to instantly accuse terrorists of failing to use the same peaceful methods that should be so well studied among them, they prove themselves not to be champions of a peaceful cause, but people desperately trying to be alternatives by any means.
Could be I am wrong about this - comments? Has anyone heard PP's condemn Al Qaeda/OBL (without prompting) as they should?
We must come together as a country, as a People, and stand united against those who would destroy us. That includes those who would destroy free expression of ideas, don't you think? I don't really understand her, but as an American citizen, she has the right to her opinion.
Or, as my Mom says, "This is America. You are born with the innate right to be just as freakin' stupid as you want, just as long as you don't slop it over onto anyone else." ;)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.