Finding Virtue
I was prompted to write this by William Stetson's recent piece "Virtue guides our nation" (September 13, 2010). Suppressing my urge to simply blast his reasoning into oblivion -- something along the lines of the "shock and awe" that he might otherwise admire -- I will offer some alternatives to his thoughts that I believe hold up better under close examination.
Mr. Stetson believes in the good will of America, that we have noble goals. While there are many who have gone abroad to do good -- my own mother started a nursing school in Kenya from 1945-1950 -- I believe he should read more broadly, including books like "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" by John Perkins and a least a sampling of books by authors like Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn and Chris Hedges. I believe that he would then have little doubt that many from this country have, for example, gone abroad to enrich themselves at the cost of others, often with horrifying long term consequences. Motivated by greed, we have done a great amount of evil, though usually accompanied by a thin veneer of righteousness.
Another point worth making is that because terrorism always arises out of a history of injustice -- injustices that American actions have often heavily supported, or even instigated -- we are complicit in these crimes against ourselves. It is therefore in our own interest to end our contribution to those injustices. This argues eloquently against the use of overwhelming force, against war with its certain generation of more injustice. The simplistic "terrorist's are bad, American's are good" as an informed viewpoint is also eliminated.
But most importantly, Stetson is making a serious mistake in ignoring the means we are using to accomplish those ends, some of which are undoubtedly good.
Perhaps the darkest, most evil principle by which humans frequently operate is the principle that the end justifies the means. The chamber of horrors that this principle unleashes, the grinding injustice that is thus generated seems sometimes to have no bounds.
But even the good ends are not really our motivation. We can hide from our true motivations through an obsession with the good that might come from our actions. But we cannot hide from the hideous nature of the means we are using. And if we admit the depraved nature of the principle of the ends justifying the means, we are then forced to confront the debasement of our supposed nobility.
We then see the ugly truth of our fear, of our degenerate moral nature. We see that fear is our underlying motivation, not virtue.
And in this honesty, we begin to find virtue.
Kevin R. Vixie