Are We Truly The Nation We Want To Be?
January 21, 2013 by linnposts.com
Celebrating the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., especially on the day the first black president is inaugurated for the second time, is redemptive. Dr. King fought for liberty and justice for all as much as any American ever has. He did so because our nation was as racist as any nation on earth had ever been. We actually made it illegal to practice justice and legal for federal and state governments to embody and perpetuate racism. Those were difficult days, far worse than it seems possible for them to have been. Put starkly, they were awful. So celebrating Martin Luther King Day is one small way our nation can admit it was wrong. It represents a de facto request for forgiveness, and each year serves to remind us that our nation still has much work to do to ensure equal rights and equal treatment under the law for all Americans.
This inauguration day suggests that one of the ways we can do that is to hold our politicians accountable for their actions regardless of our own political leanings and/or affiliation. I think, for example, that every liberal and every Democrat ought to voice our criticism of President Obama for the drone war he is fighting in our name. He is the president we supported for re-election, which is why our views matter so much. They are not sour grapes. They are expressions of genuine concern and outrage. Drones represent the modern development of mechanized warfare that puts death and destruction almost exclusively in the hands of technology. Drones will soon be able to target themselves and shoot bombs without human involvement once they take off. This doesn’t make war safer for Americans. It makes it more barbaric. We have been rightly outraged by Newtown, CT children being killed by a crazed gunman. But we should also be equally outraged by children in other nations the same age as those in Newtown being killed indiscriminately by our government’s use of drones. Essentially we are fighting for the liberty and justice we say we stand for as a people in a way that makes a mockery of both because of its abject immorality .
At the same time, conservatives and Republicans should have been morally strong enough to hold the Bush administration accountable for its use of torture. Besides the fact that it doesn’t yield reliable information – and that IS a fact – torture is and should forever be an international crime precisely because it is morally reprehensible. What is more, it has robbed our nation of any right to criticize its use by other nations. In the news today is the fact that male prisoners are being brutally violated and mutilated by Afghan soldiers. But on what moral grounds can our government object to this abuse and torture when we are guilty of it ourselves? Because of what Bush and Cheney did, with the nation complicit in it, the U.S. no longer has the moral standing in the world to criticize others for inhumane treatment of prisoners of war.
Yes, liberty and justice for all does matter, or at least it is supposed to. It certainly did to Martin Luther King, Jr.. But what about us today? On this day when our government witnesses a president swearing to uphold the Constitution, do liberty and justice really matter to us, or they do except in instances when we are afraid or think we are under attack? Perhaps we should also recall that Dr. King used to say that injustice for one is injustice for all, and justice for one is justice for all. Moral principles guide a person and a nation’s actions all the time, or not at all. To suppose they can matter only when we say they do is not only hypocritical, it is likely that we are undercutting those principles to the point where one day they will mean nothing at all.
Happy birthday, Dr. King, and congratulations Mr. President. May the former rest in peace, and the latter practice it in every way.
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Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments
linnposts.com 
Thank you, Jan, for your unbiased and well-written piece!
The word “want” in your title is the key to it all. Too many visions of what “we” shoulds be as a nation, depending on the point of view. I think common moral values, enshrined in our Bill of Rights, DO permeate most peoples’ vision of what the nation should be. However our multifaceted diversity is used to divide us, create in-fighting, by groups attempting to enshrine a far more narrow vision of what we should be. It is my understanding that from our beginnings ultra-individualistic capitalists never believed in democracy. Utimately they tolerated it as long as they could do what they wanted to make money. That thinking by todays’ elites is behind the dismantaling of our democracy. They are separating the citizenry and consolidating the government. We need to do whatever it takes to confront that reality and evolve stategies to repair this broken system. Acknowledge the brokenness, identify corporations as legal entities not people and call money property not speech. And yes, we need to communicate to all representatives their moral obligation to us ALL. This requires a lot of grass roots work. Once enough of us wake up it can happen. Thank you, Jan, for this thoughtful post.