Expressing Liberty in a Time of War

By James Preston Allen, Publisher

In the last issue, I made the point about the difference between the symbolism and the acts of patriotism, pointing out that all too many of you willingly stand up and mouth the pledge of allegiance, yet might never stand up and resist the oppressions of our own government. Far too many Americans can pledge allegiance to the flag but never think about standing up for the liberties that this red, white and blue is supposed to represent. This doesn’t mean blindly going to war because the President decides to or because Congress has been duped, hoodwinked or just simply abdicated their role in declaring war. We haven’t had a declared war since Pearl Harbor was bombed. You can think anything you want to about the American flag––love it or burn it. But the flag isn’t the issue. What it was supposed to represent was the sovereign republic where individual rights, as designated in the Constitution and the subsequent 27 Amendments, were protected. That’s where the “liberty and justice for all” part comes in and where the American experiment is still being hashed out.

The creators of the US Constitution desired to create “a more perfect union” and never quite imagined the lengths to which “We the People” might eventually take this idea of liberty. Well maybe a few of them did––Franklin, Jefferson and Monroe. The firebrand patriot pamphleteer of the American Revolution, Thomas Paine, certainly considered the consequences of liberty in both his Common Sense and The Age of Reason, but did he ever think once about gay marriage or the torturing of prisoners at Guantanamo? These issues of liberty and justice have been passed on to this generation to either sort out or ignore.

I used to have this idealistic belief about the American creed of liberty, which went something like this: if you took a random selection of citizens of this country and placed them in some unincorporated landscape, one of the first six things they would accomplish would be self-governance. I am no longer that secure in this belief today, as I have some grave doubts that any cross section of this grand republic has any grasp on the idea or the practice of self-government that does anything more than advance their personal monetary self-interests. There are a few of us left who really want to persist in the belief of enlightened self-interest––meaning that what we do in the civic sphere with the public debate of policy is practiced with the intent of executing actions which benefit the most of society while being fair and just to the least, making the actions of this governance transparent.

I say this because almost everywhere one looks today, whether it is at the local school leadership council or at the Chamber of Commerce or even to boards of organizations both public and private, there is an inherent distrust of and dismissive disdain for the democratic process. Adherence to it is for lip service only. Few rarely want to discuss the difficult critical issues in open debate. Even fewer want to have “an uncomfortable” collision of ideas where someone’s feelings might be hurt. And fewer still have the leadership qualities or knowledge (preferably of Robert’s Rules of Order) to chair a contentious meeting that doesn’t end up in disharmonious chaos. It doesn’t help much that we have such spineless and/or corrupt leadership examples at the very top of our current political system, but then being a saint has never been a pre-qualification for national office. There’s a reason why we only place dead presidents on our currency; they are the only ones the public trusts!

The problem is with us, in the way we choose to interact on a civic level in the messy process of making democracy happen. We have few examples of success and fewer opportunities to practice democracy in action. We have, as a nation, adopted the top down corporate management of big business as the model for success. Few have the patience or commitment to the process and are all too ready to opt out for seemingly benign forms of autocracy, oligarchy or paternalism.

The end result that we now see at the very top of this heap in Washington D.C. is a special kind of cronyism that is a complete anathema to this republic’s creed of liberty and justice for all. It is the perfect reflection of who we have become as a people––separated from our beliefs by the practice of commerce. The result is the ascendancy of the terribly flawed corporate-theocracy of born-again free-market capitalism. This wartime régime has not only cost our nation the lives of thousands or critically maimed others for life, cost hundreds of billions of dollars on a failed policy, plus the loss of all credibility in the area of international law in a part of the world critical to our national-economic security. But most importantly because of this insanity of war, we have also lost our own common faith and belief in the very things we say we are defending.

Sadly, just standing up to say the pledge of allegiance with your lapel flag pin anymore just doesn’t cut it! Could you imagine what would happen the next time some paper patriot gets up to lead the Flag Salute and half the audience remains seated in silence? Silence in a time of tyranny is not necessarily ascent. It can also be resistance!

Do you have an opinion or comment about this article?
Click here to tell the publisher.