|
Why We Resist
By Chris Hedges
12/11/07 "TruthDig.com
" --- The refusal to pay my taxes if we
go to war with Iran, and the portion of my taxes spent on the
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan if we do not cut off funding for
these two conflicts, is not a means. It is an end. I do not know
if my refusal, and the refusal of others, will be effective in
halting these wars. All I know is that it is worth doing. The
alternative, a complacency bred from cynicism and despair, is
worse. Refusing to actively resist injustice and flagrant
violations of international law, refusing to attempt to turn
back the tide of American tyranny, is surrender. It is the death
of hope.
Acts of resistance are moral
acts. They begin because people of conscience can no longer
tolerate abuse and despotism. They are carried out not because
they are effective but because they are right. Those who begin
these acts are few in number and dismissed by the cynics who
hide their fear behind their worldliness. Resistance is about
affirming life in a world awash in death. It is the supreme act
of faith, the highest form of spirituality. We remember and
honor the names of those who, solitary when they began, defied
their age.
Henry David Thoreau.
Jane Adams.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Mahatma Gandhi.
Milovan Djilas.
Andrei Sakharov.
Martin Luther King.
Václav Havel.
Nelson Mandela. It is time to join them. They sacrificed
their security and comfort, often spent time in jail and in some
cases were killed. They understood that to live in the fullest
sense of the word, to exist as free and independent human
beings, meant to defy authority. When the dissident Lutheran
pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer was taken from his cell in a Nazi
prison to the gallows, his last words were “this
is for me the end, but also the beginning.”
Bonhoeffer, who returned to
Germany from Union Theological Seminary in New York to fight the
Nazis, knew that most of the citizens in his nation were
complicit through their silence in a vast enterprise of death.
He affirmed what we all must affirm. It did not mean he avoided
death. It did not mean that he, as a distinct individual,
survived. But he understood that his resistance, and even his
death, was an act of love. He fought for the sanctity of life.
He gave, even to those who did not join him, another narrative.
His defiance condemned his executioners.
“Cast your whole vote, not a
strip of paper merely, but your whole influence,” Thoreau wrote
in “Civil
Disobedience” after going to jail for refusing to pay his
taxes during the Mexican-American War. “A minority is powerless
while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority
then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.
If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up
war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose. If
a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that
would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay
them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent
blood.”
Those who recognize the
injustice of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a war with
Iran, who concede that these wars are not only a violation of
international law but under the post-Nuremberg laws are defined
as criminal wars of aggression, yet do nothing, have forfeited
their rights as citizens. By allowing the status quo to go
unchallenged they become agents of injustice. To do nothing is
to do something. They practice a faux morality. They vent
against war on the Internet or among themselves but do not
resist. They take refuge in the conception of themselves as
moderates. They stand on what they insist is the middle ground
without realizing that the middle ground has shifted under us,
that the old paradigm of left and right, liberal and
conservative, is meaningless in a world where, to quote Immanuel
Kant, those in power have embraced “a radical evil.”
“I must confess that over the
past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white
moderate,” King wrote from another era as he sat
inside a Birmingham jail. “I have almost reached the
regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in
his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Councilor
or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more
devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace
which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the
presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in
the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of
direct action’; who paternalistically believes he can set the
timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical
concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for
a ‘more convenient season.’ Shallow understanding from people of
good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding
from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more
bewildering than outright rejection.”
This lukewarm acceptance, this
failure to act, is the worst form of moral cowardice. It
cripples and destroys us. When
Dante enters the “city of woes” in the “Inferno” he hears
the cries of “those whose lives earned neither honor nor bad
fame,” those rejected by heaven and hell, those who dedicated
their lives solely to the pursuit of happiness. These are all
the “good” people, the ones who never made a fuss, who filled
their lives with vain and empty pursuits, harmless no doubt, to
amuse themselves, who never took a stand for anything, never
risked anything, who went along. They never looked too hard at
their lives, never felt the need, never wanted to look.
We face a crisis. Our democratic
institutions are being dismantled. We are headed for a state of
perpetual war. We are paralyzed by fear. We will be stripped, if
we do not resist, of our few remaining rights. To resist, while
there is still time, is not only the highest form of
spirituality but the highest form of patriotism. It is, if you
care about what is worth protecting in this country, a moral
imperative. There are hundreds of thousands who have died in the
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This number would be dwarfed by a
war with Iran, which could ignite a regional inferno in the
Middle East. Not a lot is being asked of us. Compare our
potential sacrifices with what is being inflicted on and
demanded of those trapped in the violence in Iraq, Afghanistan
and soon, perhaps, Iran. Courage, as Aristotle wrote, is the
highest of human virtues because without it we are unlikely to
practice any other virtue. Once we find courage we find freedom.
Click on "comments" below to read or post comments
Comment Guidelines
Be succinct, constructive and
relevant to the story.
We encourage engaging, diverse
and meaningful commentary. Do not include
personal information such as names, addresses,
phone numbers and emails. Comments falling
outside our guidelines – those including
personal attacks and profanity – are not
permitted.
See our complete
Comment Policy
and
use this link to notify us if you have concerns
about a comment.
We’ll promptly review and remove any
inappropriate postings.
Send Page To a Friend
In accordance
with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material
is distributed without profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving the
included information for research and educational
purposes. Information Clearing House has no
affiliation whatsoever with the originator of
this article nor is Information ClearingHouse
endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
|
