Imagine the Quaker
an erstwhile mirror site for weblog on newquaker.com
archives | newquaker.comTuesday, May 18, 2004
At the Cato Institute, Ted Galen Carpenter has a short topical report on Gallup's recent survey of Iraqi public opinion vis-à-vis the Bush Administration's treasured opinion that "there is a silent majority of Iraqis who regard coalition forces as liberators, want those forces to stay for a prolonged period, oppose insurgent attacks on coalition troops, and are enthusiastic about creating a Western-style democracy for their country. The poll results contradict every one of those assumptions."
Imagine that it's 1775 and some invasion force lands on American soil, proclaims that King George III is dethroned, and proceeds to impose a style of democracy on us. (Oh, never mind that along with this "democracy" comes booze, pornography, varieties of pork products, the loss or destruction of irreplaceable cultural treasures, humiliation, sexual abuse, torture, and free frisbees for the kids.) Really, how many of us would soon be considered insurgents? The democratic ideal can't be gifted, let alone thrust upon a people: surely it must arise from within the social order itself. Wait a minute—we've known this all along! So somebody tell me again what we're doing in Iraq.
posted by Merle Harton, Jr. 10:09 PM
Sunday, May 16, 2004
In the previous century Albert Camus raised an important question about the possibility of a principled life in the order of consistent Christian values. In his short novel, L'Etranger, we watch the criminal prosecution and sentencing of Meursault, an Algerian, for the apparently senseless killing of an Arab. When he is asked to say that he regrets his crime, Meursault says instead that he is annoyed. In his speech before the court, the prosecutor says: "This man has, I repeat, no place in a community whose basic principles he flouts without compunction." Rather than consider Meursault a piece of social wreckage (or a moron, schizophrenic, or modern alienated human), Camus says:
"A much more accurate idea of the character, or, at least one much closer to the author's intentions, will emerge if one asks just how Meursault doesn't play the game. The reply is a simple one: he refuses to lie. To lie is not only to say what isn't true. It is also and above all, to say more than is true, and, as far as the human heart is concerned, to express more than one feels. This is what we all do, every day, to simplify life. He says what he is, he refuses to hide his feelings, and immediately society feels threatened."
Perhaps it is the sheer inertia of living that compels us to say more than is true, perhaps it is our way of appearing to be an organic part of society—perhaps, still, words are like clothes, so that with the right words we can appear hip, on fashion's leading edge, even if that edge is a precipice to the basest of human motivation.
If more Christians spoke the truth, we would not have Camus, and still fewer articulate atheists, saying: "One would therefore not be much mistaken to read The Stranger as the story of a man who, without heroics, agrees to die for the truth. I also happened to say, again paradoxically, that I had to draw in my character the only Christ we deserve." [See his Preface, American University edition, 1956]
posted by Merle Harton, Jr. 1:50 PM
© Merle Harton, Jr. All rights reserved. Biblical references are NIV® unless otherwise noted.
