Yesterday I offered a quote from chapter 15 in a comment in my diary at dailykos. Today I+óGé¼Gäód like to elevate that quote to a separate focus in this diary, but it will not be all I offer. As a white man only a few years younger, I found that Robinson challenged a lot of my thinking. I+óGé¼Gäód like to offer you the chance to sample what I mean.
Robinson's book covers history, anthropology, sociology. He is a bright man, having graduated from Harvard Law (where one of his classmates was Clinton National Security Advisor Sandy Berger). He (and his brother Max - first African-American to cohost a network news show and who died of Aids) grew up in the segregation of Richmond Virginia. There are things in this book with which I might argue, but reading the perspectives of a thoughtful man whose experience of society is so much different than mine stretched my thinking in ways not part of its recent experience.
Here is the paragraph that begins chapter 6 on Race, which I think offers one question worth serious meditation:
Is it race, because of its conspicuous characteristics, that confuses us? Could it be that race is merely incidental to some more compelling but less palpable determinism? how separate and several are the causal tributaries that variegate the great streams of human culture, setting one off irritably against the next with predictably disastrous results? I have never wanted to be master of the universe. I have never wanted to visit the moon. Why would I? Why would anyone? Isn't it perfectly obvious that every such incremental know-how draws us all closer to the end of everything? Isn't the simple knowledge of that more important than the advanced quantum physics of mass self-destruction? Is it some inexplicable spiritual emptiness that sense the progeny of one culture, and not the next, questing - ever unremittingly, blindly, suicidally questing? Looking out, never in, where the small decencies wither in bad light unpraised? Isn't the most essential achievement the achievement of learning how to be?
Robinson offers a real sobering look at our current president, and what he represents in our society. During that chapter he offers an exchange between an assistant AG from Missouri before that state's Supreme Court attempting to bar reopening of the case of a death row inmate because of new evidence. I will pick up chapter Nine (Leader) at that point.
Judge Laura Denvir Stith asked Mr. Jung, "Are you suggesting that even if we find [that] Mr. Amrine is actually innocent, he should be executed?"
Mr. Jung answered,"That's correct, your honor."
With just one-twentieth of the world's population, America has, living behind bars, one-fourth of the world's prisoners, over two million and counting. Half of them are black. Of those on death row, half are black, another quarter are Hispanic.
America does not care about them. It does not care about the circumstances of their predicament, how they got where they are, or America's long- or short-term responsibility for their dilemma. The country has turned its back on the past, and in so doing, destroyed its domestic future.
Man-boy will see to that.
America does not know this yet.
For now, it is preoccupied, stricken with a homogenizing patriotism of the type that chills free expression and frightens the thoughtful. Could Germany in the early going after the Versailles humiliations have felt like this? before all the public blearing of marshall music. Before German patriots surrendered their minds to the fatherland on flat planes of straight numberless lines that stretched as far as the eye could see across the urban landscapes of Berlin.
Man-boy, the domestic time bomb of modern America, was created by the Founders. The Founders were smart, visionary, if racist, limited men. Could as much be said about George W. Bush? In this new era of rampant impersonal e-tardism where the prosperous have little range of knowledge and the suffering are shunt form the view, could such a man as George W. Bush cone near to thinking that thoughts that could save American society from itself?
And finally, one more time, the passage I quoted yesterday. I think if offers quite starkly a basic moral test, one that I would be happy to present to ANY supporter not only of this war, but of any use of military force that is not defensive in nature.
Would the war in Iraq have been worth a single life, it that single life were mine?
Ask yourself this question. Answer it, honestly. Just to yourself. Silently.
Before anyone supports war for others, against others, one should ask one's self this question. To measure for one's self the real value of conviction, one must know not whether one is prepared to sacrifice another's life, but whether one is prepared to sacrifice one's own. For if nothing else is equal n this world, life, the one previous, irreplaceable - if temporary - window unto its all and everything, is. Certainly one can draw no morally defensible distinction between the value one life against that of the next. With respect to the simple all-valuable possession of life itself, if in nothing else, the Muslim, the Christian, the woman, the man, the soldier, the civilian, the president, and the peasant are equal.
So there the question poses itself again. Would the war in Iraq, in which thousands lost the ultimate everything, have been worth a single life if that life were yours? Mr. President? Secretary Rumsfeld? Secretary Powell? Reverend Robertson? Anyone? Please.
For if the answer conveyed, in but a synapse's involuntary leap, is no, and you supported the war, or worse, made it happen for those that died on both sides, then you are the most reprehensible of moral frauds.
The book is not perfect. At times Robinson could use both an editor and a proofreader. But neither of those needs in any way undercuts the power of the thoughts and insights with which he challenges us.
The book is available in paper. I found it worth reading, which is why I have taken this time to share the foregoing with you.
I will check back from time to time to read any comments and respond where appropriate.
We are fortunate to have been spared from fighting wars on our own soil for many years, buffered by two oceans and peaceful neighbors on our borders. But the illusion of that buffer zone was shaken by terrorist attacks.
Robinson retains his US citizenship. He visits frequently. And he stands on principle. Let me give another example.
The black faculty at Georgetown Law (including Haverford Grad Charles Lawrence '65 with whom I overlapped) had arranged for him to receive an honorary degree. When he arrived in Washington the night before and rfead in the Post that George Tenet had been honored by the School of Foreign Service, he decided to decline his degree. Since he was not going to have an opportunity to speak, he wrote out his remarks, which appear in the book. He did not appear at the ceremony.
Remember about me: that I believe there is value in standing on principle, that I think we need to try to listen and understand across our differences as far as we can, that I am concerned about some of the level of rhetoric that we put out as counterproductive to our long term causes.
I do stay and fight. But I think it interesting to see the perspective of someone who made a different choice, and to try to understand why.
So, "quitting America" is like swearing off alcohol ... but you can still drink beer.