So, when I write:
We cannot evade the moral question, nor can we hope to answer it, unequivocally, once and for all. It will, so speak, always be open to question and discussion, and there is likewise no evading the questioning and the discussion.
I am admittedly echoing Thoreau and Walden, a thinker and a text that has had a profound influence on my thinking. In the broad outline of my thought, I am also echoing Isaiah Berlin, another thinker that has had a profound influence on my thinking. I borrow the term "comprehensive doctrine" from him, and spin out to Thomas Kuhn and The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. I am not sure where the influence of one begins or ends, but they are there, always, in the background, along with many other voices, central and marginal.
Having said that, there seems to be a yearning among the American people, at least today, for a strong and messianic "leader." Historically, we have good reason to be fearful of those who put themselves out as such, and perhaps enough has been said on that score, but indulge me just a moment. It would be delusional and counter-productive for anyone today to claim actual divinity within the populace, and those like the donald, with their overweening megalomania, claim to be, in themselves, the "embodiment" of a comprehensive doctrine. It is, as I've said, the messianic imperative to "follow me, for I am the path to salvation and greatness." In corporate life, and the large public organizations that envy the corporate life, there is an abundant valorization of "leadership" and those who possess it. I have heard the catch phrase -- "lead, follow, or get out of the way" -- too many times to count, and perhaps in corporate life, in the military, where a clarity of vision and the means to achieve it may well be necessary, so too "leadership" and the obedience it demands may well be necessary. In the sovereign state, however, what those who are not "in leadership," but who also refuse to follow, particularly when it is clear enough that the self-interest of leadership has trumped reciprocal moral obligations? It may be sufficient to "lay low," but what of those who refuse to follow, and likewise refuse to "get out of the way?" They are, so to speak, an impediment and must eventually be "PUT out of the way." Within the circumscribed boundaries of corporate life, the military, or even the "church," it is perhaps enough to put the impediment outside the boundaries -- fire them, discharge them, excommunicate them -- but within the sovereign state, what then?
In my youth, another catch phrase that was quite popular among bumper sticker thinkers, was "America, love it or leave it." There was much implied in such a statement that today, post Nixon, would be almost unthinkable. Loving America meant loving the leadership and their bellicose stand against the "red menace," but the prescription to "leave it" was, of course, for the most part meaningless. To avoid the draft, some did, of course, and the destination of choice was Canada, but for the vast majority of disaffected Americans, there was no "leaving," at least not voluntarily. I remember having the conversation with my father, even writing a letter to the Omaha Herald, to the effect that "freedom of speech" allowed us to give voice to our dissent, convince others to our point of view, and change either the minds of the existing leadership, or when the vote came round, change the existing leadership. I was, with all the energy of youth, aghast that so many seemed perfectly willing to contravene what I thought was, after all, a core American value, embodied in our first amendment, "freedom of speech." I am now, with all the cynicism of age, hearing the same refrain in the donald's imperative to "get him the hell out of here." Right now, of course, he is referring to the protestor's presence at his rally, and within the circumscribed space of the rally, not unlike the circumscribed space of a corporate board room, one might actually understand the imperative, but what would it mean were it expanded to the broader sovereign state? If the violence advocated against the protestor were extended outside the space of the rally? We are beginning to see the same confrontational politics that prevailed during the 60s spill over in, of all places, Chicago. So ...
It is perhaps not surprising that the immediate impulse of the leader, the fuhrer, the dictator, the ubermensch, the CEO, those who would be the embodiment of greatness and the one to take us to their greatness, is to shut down free speech. I have railed enough against "comprehensive" doctrines, or the even more dangerous "comprehensive" and messianic ego. They are dangerous in the most fundamental sense because they would "put out of the way" anything that contravenes their doctrine, or their ego, and we have seen enough evidence, throughout history, to believe that they would not be sent to a posh resort in the Bahamas. Both the comprehensive doctrine and the comprehensive ego are, in a fundamental sense, un-American. Our founding fathers recognized early on that "a perfect union" might be unattainable, but "in order to form a more perfect union," a variety of voices should be heard. If we cannot hope to answer, unequivocally, once and for all, the moral and ethical issues implicit to the question "how best to govern?" then free speech, and the dissent to the prevailing view that comes with free speech, is a necessary condition to our continuing attempts to provide, if not perfection, then more perfect provisional answers. Of course dissent always comes with risk -- one imagines Thoreau in the Concord jail and King in the Birmingham jail -- but both venues were rather posh compared to the concentration camp or the gulag.
Moral pragmatism aims at a "more perfect union," and more on that, with a touch of Kuhn, tomorrow perhaps ...
No comments:
Post a Comment