PEACE OUT:

Closed Hearts, Closed Minds (Michael Lerner, Sep/Oct 2003, Tikkun)

Not infrequently I hear people in academic or progressive circles making political analyses whose subtext is something like this: "Why are Americans so stupid? Can't they see that President Bush lied to them about Iraq and that his tax cuts have actually made things much worse, creating a huge budget deficit which will cause massive cutbacks in social services and will eventually impact their own retirement funds?"

We could, of course, respond at the level of these charges by saying, "No, people are not stupid. They know and are somewhat annoyed that they've been lied to by an administration determined to eliminate Saddam Hussein, but they are also still quite happy that Saddam has been eliminated from power, as are we at Tikkun, because they recognize that Saddam was a horrendous dictator whose oppression of his own people might have continued for a very long time without U.S. intervention. We at Tikkun still do not support the intervention, however, and expect tragic consequences from the way it was carried out, as well as the continuing oppression of the Iraqi people by U.S. forces and their puppets among the Iraqi population. We believe that other means would have produced even better ends, but we still understand
why people are happy about the overthrow of Saddam and hence more ambivalent about a total condemnation of the Bush intervention. Similarly, although we
think the tax cuts are having a terrible impact on American society, we can understand why people resent high taxes, since the government actually uses
their tax money in ways that are invisible to them, and which do not seem to provide real improvements in the quality of their lives. It's not as if the government in the years when Democrats controlled both the Congress and the White House used their tax monies to actually solve the environmental crisis, provide health care, end crime, homelessness, or hunger. Why shouldn't they feel good about getting some of that money back for their personal use, since its use for collective purposes seems misguided and wasteful? And, when it comes to social security, people do understand its efficacy fight to maintain it--they are selective in their support for tax cuts."

Fine, you might say, but why don't people hear the better and more rational arguments made by people in the antiwar movement and Tikkun that show that the invasion of another country to depose its rulers is not a smart way to build a world of peace, and that cutting social services is not likely to lead to a greater sense of security or safety in our daily lives? How can people not see the human suffering that is caused when we legitimate violence as a way to achieve our political goals, no matter how noble? How can they not see the human suffering caused by budget cutbacks of education, health care, elderly care, and other vital services? Most of these arguments on either side, however, miss the central point: The reason that people have closed their minds to these arguments is that their hearts are closed. And the reasons for that are not usually directly connected to the specific political issues being debated. The issues are almost never the issue.

There was an unintentionally hilarious commentary on NPR's All Things Considered the other night, bu Gustav Niebuhr, who one would hope is not one of the Niebuhr's. He talked admiringly about how the Dalai Lama and some buddhist monk from Vietnam are establishing a new strain pacifism in the West that follows in the footsteps of Quaker pacifism. The Quakers pacifism is sufficiently hollow--living predominantly in the two most powerful nations of their respective times, Great Britain and America, they've never faced a true test where their very culture was at risk as a consequence of their refusal to fight, but they did at least, quite courageously, go to prison to vindicate their beliefs in the past. But the two men of whom Mr. Niebuhr was speaking have fled their own countries, leaving their flocks behind to suffer under Communism. Easy enough to tell the folks you left behind that they shouldn't fight when you're feted and fawned upon here in the States, isn't it?

Likewise, the following "[people] are also still quite happy that Saddam has been eliminated from power, as are we at Tikkun, because they recognize that Saddam was a horrendous dictator whose oppression of his own people might have continued for a very long time without U.S. intervention. We at Tikkun still do not support the intervention...why don't people hear the better and more rational arguments made by people in the antiwar movement and Tikkun that show that the invasion of another country to depose its rulers is not a smart way to build a world of peace" seems to be morally indefensible. If the choice pacifism offers is between a peace that requires people to live in semi-permanent oppression under a "horrendous dictator" or else war to win freedom, then surely war is the better opition.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 1, 2003 9:04 AM