There is a man on a collective farm somewhere. He is tall and strong, youthful and healthy. He stands head and shoulders above the rest of his fellow farmers. He is, by chance and luck, also better educated and more intelligent than most of them. If he wanted to, he could run the place. He could point the farm in one direction or another. He could take what he wanted from his fellows, or not. He could choose which rules of the farm he wanted to follow and which he wanted to flout. No one can seriously challenge this man on an intellectual basis, and especially on a physical one. He is truly his own master. So what does the man do?
He works in the fields like everyone else. He follows the rules of the collective, even when they appear foolish to him. In this case, he will call them into question and state his disapproval, but because he knows that the farm cannot survive and function unless everyone on it obeys the rules, he obeys the rules. In exchange, when he speaks with a reasonable voice, he is listened to, and occasionally his ideas are carried out by the farm.
He knows that there are weaker and more venal people on the farm who are envious of his strength and his possessions. He knows that they will occasionally try to deceive him and bring him down using scurrilous and deceptive means. He also knows that it is not right for him to say "since they will do it to me, I will do it to them." To say that would destroy any moral rightness he has. So sometimes, even though it means handicapping himself, he refuses to cheat. He plays by the rules. He sees other farmers keeping the choice pickings of their haul for themselves before turning in their goods to the co-op, but he does not do this. Why? Because he has a faith in democracy and in the law. He trusts in the machinations of the law, the system the collective uses for justice and compensation, and democracy to prevail over dishonesty. Maybe he is wrong. Is he wrong? If he's wrong, then Democracy isn't the best system and never should have been around in the first place. If he's right, then resorting to petty practices just because his enemies do them is amazingly immoral.
I have always had a less-refined image of this in my mind when I think of what I want this country to be. I'm not particularly loyal to the United States, because I think a geopolitical entity is a foolish thing to be loyal to. But that's just me- and in the end I live in this country, and since I'm lucky enough to have a voice in it, I am going to try to make it the best place it can be. And in the global community, this is what I think the United States should be- it is the strong farmer, the one who could dominate the others if he chooses, use his indisputable strength to pick and choose which rules he can obey, all to his own benefit. But the United States shouldn't. As a nation, we should put our shoulders to the ground and follow the rules like everyone else- we have to. If we cannot win playing by the rules, we don't deserve to win. If both sides resort to torture, and napalm, and targeted assassinations, and villification of the enemy, then how can you look at one and say "this party is more deserving of victory, in a moral sense, than this one"? Americans use violence, coercion, and death to try and create a new world order, to gain strategic control over an important part of the world to us, and to, only because it suits us, create something that looks like a peaceful Iraqi democracy. Insurgents use violence, coercion, and death to try and get what THEY want- a foreign invader off their soil, in many cases a return to Baath party rule or an Islamic theocracy- and in some cases, all they want is a foreign interloper that has brought much suffering to leave. If both sides are showing disrespect for human life, who is better? Obviously, we are not taking hostages and beheading them. We aren't using car bombs, and we aren't suicide bombing marketplaces- I do not believe in a moral equivalent. But we must be on constant guard against our own worse instincts, because we're sliding down a slippery slope.
Have any of you ever heard the name Zaynab Haadei Jabar? I doubt you have. George Bush effectively signed this 12-year old girl's death warrant when he issued the order to attack Iraq- she was killed by an American missile in Al-Bassra on March 22, 2003, along with two other girls aged 10 and 17. Born in 1990 or 1991, because of an Iraqi man she undoubtedly feared and American men in a distant land she never knew or saw, her short life was framed by war, privy to an endless panorama of economic ruin, torture, rape, murder, and the deaths of thousands of people from easily preventable diseases. Those who weren't killed by the regime were killed by the effects of UN/US sanctions, sanctimoniously implemented, along with two wars, with widespread popular support from people who had never had to worry about dying of typhoid fever, or starving to death, or being in the wrong place at the wrong time when an American missile ended your life in a blink. George Bush had the power to end this young woman's life, and countless thousands of others, and he chose to do it. Perhaps there is a situation in which it is appropriate to use such power. Perhaps not. That's an argument for ethicists and theologians. But it is unquestionably an awesome, fearful power, and those who would use it must be of the stature to use it morally. We do not have such a leader.
To me, true humility is that undertaken by the person or entity that has everything to gain- at least in a strategic and material sense- by not being humble. An entity that has immense power and chooses voluntarily to pretend it did not- to use that power justly and fairly within democratic systems and nowhere else. To accept it when the community makes a rule it disagrees with. To look out for the interests of the world rather than itself. A truly humble person is one who could have been great but chose to be ordinary, not in achievement but in self-image.
Power is a privilege, or an accident of fate. It is never a right. As the old axiom goes, of whom much is given, much is expected. One of the high expectations the world should have of the powerful is for them to follow the rules, for the good of all people in all places. The founding fathers called it "a decent respect for the opinions of mankind." We do not have that now. Many would argue that we never really did, but few would presume that we do now. We have a president who condones the use of torture. We remit suspects captured by American military and law enforcement to other countries where torture is just fine, so as to avoid bloodying our own hands. We detain people for years without charges, access to counsel, or a venue in which to contest their treatment. And we do all these things, in an example of sad irony, claiming that they are necessary to protect our freedoms.
If this is what the United States does, then we do not deserve the power we have to defend our freedoms. The fact that Senator Durbin's comments about Nazi Germany or Stalin's Gulags were somewhat hyperbolic is not the issue here. It is not a point of pride to say that we are "not as bad as the Soviets" or "not as cruel as the Nazis." We ought to have higher standards than that. We were, as Winthrop said, to be "a city on a hill." At the cost of sounding campy, the city has been darkened by arrogance, greed, and jingoism. We demand tribute from lesser nations like vassals did from their serfs. We don't treat other people, or each other, with respect. We have great power, and under the current president, we have caused great damage. I used to try and be conciliatory, but I have to admit the truth- I have no respect for the occupant of the White House, and because of what he has done with his power, precious little for his office. The world is paying dearly for his arrogance, because he could not see that strength is not entitlement.