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Trish
SFN Addict
USA
2102 Posts |
 Posted - 12/16/2001 : 22:16:16
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From the NYT...
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December 15, 2001
Hail and Farewell
By Anthony Lewis
Everything comes to an end, my friend Sydney Gruson told me long ago. Now
the time has come for this column to end.
I have been writing it for 32 years. As I look back at those turbulent
decades, I see a time of challenge to a basic tenet of modern society: faith
in reason.
No one can miss the reality of that challenge after Sept. 11. Islamic
fundamentalism, rejecting the rational processes of modernity, menaces the
peace and security of many societies.
But the phenomenon of religious fundamentalism is not to be found in Islam
alone. Fundamentalist Christians in America, believing that the Bible's
story of creation is the literal truth, question not only Darwin but the
scientific method that has made contemporary civilization possible.
Religion and extreme nationalism have formed deadly combinations in these
decades, impervious to reason. Serbs in the grip of religion and mystical
nationalist history killed thousands and expelled millions in their "ethnic
cleansing" of Bosnia. Fundamentalist Judaism and extreme Israeli nationalism
have fed the movement to plant settlements in Palestinian territory, fueling
Islamic militancy among Palestinians.
Faith in reason was the foundation stone of the United States. The men who
met in Philadelphia in 1787 set out to create a nation from struggling
states so distant from each other that it took seven days for George
Washington to learn that New Hampshire had provided the needed ninth vote to
bring their Constitution into being. They wagered that a national government
based on written rules could hold the country together.
Intricate checks and balances, they reasoned, would prevent the abuses of
power that tempt all politicians. They put their faith not in men but in
law: the law of the Constitution.
Without the foundation of law, this vast country could never have survived
as one, could never have absorbed streams of immigrants from myriad
cultures. With one terrible exception, the Civil War, law and the
Constitution have kept America whole and free.
Of course we have not always been faithful to the vision of the Framers. In
time of war and stress, we have yielded again and again to fear. Fear of
Jacobin terror in France produced the Sedition Act of 1798. In World War I,
men and women were sentenced to long prison terms for mildly critical
political speech. In World War II, unreasoning fear led to the internment of
Japanese-Americans. During the cold war, fear of Communism brought the
abuses of McCarthyism.
Today again fear threatens reason. Aliens are imprisoned for months on the
flimsiest of grounds. The attorney general of the United States moves to
punish people on the basis of secret evidence, the Kafkaesque hallmark of
tyranny. Recently F.B.I. agents went to a Houston art museum and, on
suspicion that it was promoting terrorism, scrutinized a work that showed a
city skyline burning.
I am an optimist about America. But how can I maintain that optimism after
Vietnam, after the murder of so many who fought for civil rights, after the
Red scare and after the abusive tactics planned by government today? I can
because we have regretted our mistakes in the past, relearning every time
that no ruler can be trusted with arbitrary power. And I believe we will
again.
The hard question is whether our commitment to law will survive the new
sense of vulnerability that is with us all after Sept. 11. It is easy to
tolerate dissent when we feel safe.
But after all, this has always been a country of unbounded optimism, a
country that struggles with itself and conquers corrupting habit. In my
lifetime we have carried out two revolutions, unfinished but extraordinary:
the ending of racial discrimination and the move toward equality for women.
Thirty-two years ago few imagined that the secretary of state could be
anything but a white male.
In a speech nearly a century ago, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. foresaw
racial conflict and destruction of the world's resources. But even that
great skeptic concluded: "Beyond the vision of battling races and an
impoverished earth I catch a dreaming glimpse of peace."
In the end I believe that faith in reason will prevail. But it will not
happen automatically. Freedom under law is hard work. If rulers cannot be
trusted with arbitrary power, it is up to citizens to raise their voices at
injustice. The most important office in a democracy, Justice Louis Brandeis
said, is the office of citizen.
It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them. -Mark Twain
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