thedrifter
03-24-08, 09:32 AM
After five years, lamenting the loss of nobility
By H.C. Schweitzer
Article Last Updated: 03/23/2008 09:30:02 PM MDT
My youngest son will turn 18 in a few months. How rudely different is the country now than the one I knew 40 years ago.
The day I turned 18, while a college freshman, I joined the Marines. The Vietnam war was heating up and I was convinced our country led the world as a champion of nobility. Like most, I believed that the U.S. held moral and geopolitical obligations to resist tyranny and anti-democratic regimes wherever they should emerge.
Now, five years after yet another American foreign intervention, I would no more encourage my son to follow the path I had taken than to become a drug dealer. The "America" of my youthful perceptions has been sadly plundered of its once prominent nobility. Traces persist, but what remains are patchy shadows at best.
The insipid justifications for our ignoble and imperious interference in the affairs of other nations, Iraq just being the most dramatic and expensive, stirs within me a relentless anguish made all the more painful by the general lack of public outrage.
To endure such a loss of national pride, one takes comfort from the transcendent. Thus, I recall with sadness these impassioned lines by the poetic patriot, Rabindranath Tagore, the Noble Prize-winning Bengali whose elegant voice was raised against British control of India even before his co-rebellionist, Gandhi:
Where the mind is without fear, and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up
Into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depths of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost
its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Into that haven of freedom . . . let my country awake.
Perhaps, part of the gnawing dread of this loss of national honor is that the national impulse to awaken is so limp. Barely palpable, it has been rendered inert by a corporate media that obsesses over neurotic celebrity behavior rather than crises of national character. Our tragic misadventure in the Middle East continues with only lightly spoken opposition. And those, such as Sen. Barack Obama's minister, that do speak loudly are condemned by the strident voices of those who insist that their own stark definition of patriotism is the only valid one. Meanwhile, the neutered truth trickles back, shrouded like the coffins of our young servicemen and women. Numbed perhaps, by systematic campaigns of fear and shortsighted reactions, average Americans still do not rise to demand explanations and accountability from their leaders.
Written at the height of World War I, these other words of Tagore speak to the chaotic depravity of the time:
All the black evils in the world have overflowed their banks, . . .
Whom do you blame, brothers? Bow your heads down!
The sin has been yours and ours. . . .
The cowardice of the weak, the arrogance of the strong, the greed of fat prosperity, the rancor of the wronged, pride of race, and insult to man —
Has burst God's peace, raging in storm.
Will the presidential "candidates" speak candidly for the restoration of a national nobility? Will their handlers allow them? It could be argued that it's too late. But with the optimistic enthusiasm of Emerson, we can, perhaps, collectively traverse the "desert sand of dead habit," as well as the sands of the Middle East, under which someone arrogantly proclaimed was stored "our petroleum."
Heroism in opposition to evil is an honored form of sacrificial nobility. But our young military "heroes" serving now at the whims of inglorious captains of "fat prosperity" sadly contribute unwittingly to the "overflowing of evil from its black banks." Let my country awake! It is time; so agonizingly past time.
The enemy is "the other" only as long as there are no mirrors. Patriotism without nobility is unevolved tribalism, the "rancor of the wrong."
So, if my son asks me if service to the country is still important, I would reply, "Absolutely, but consider alternatives to the military, and remember it is your patriotic duty to question authority."
H.C. Schweitzer of Lafayette served in the Marines and the U.S. Army. He is a professional audiologist, businessman, research associate and graduate school lecturer at the University of Northern Colorado.
Ellie
By H.C. Schweitzer
Article Last Updated: 03/23/2008 09:30:02 PM MDT
My youngest son will turn 18 in a few months. How rudely different is the country now than the one I knew 40 years ago.
The day I turned 18, while a college freshman, I joined the Marines. The Vietnam war was heating up and I was convinced our country led the world as a champion of nobility. Like most, I believed that the U.S. held moral and geopolitical obligations to resist tyranny and anti-democratic regimes wherever they should emerge.
Now, five years after yet another American foreign intervention, I would no more encourage my son to follow the path I had taken than to become a drug dealer. The "America" of my youthful perceptions has been sadly plundered of its once prominent nobility. Traces persist, but what remains are patchy shadows at best.
The insipid justifications for our ignoble and imperious interference in the affairs of other nations, Iraq just being the most dramatic and expensive, stirs within me a relentless anguish made all the more painful by the general lack of public outrage.
To endure such a loss of national pride, one takes comfort from the transcendent. Thus, I recall with sadness these impassioned lines by the poetic patriot, Rabindranath Tagore, the Noble Prize-winning Bengali whose elegant voice was raised against British control of India even before his co-rebellionist, Gandhi:
Where the mind is without fear, and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up
Into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depths of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost
its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Into that haven of freedom . . . let my country awake.
Perhaps, part of the gnawing dread of this loss of national honor is that the national impulse to awaken is so limp. Barely palpable, it has been rendered inert by a corporate media that obsesses over neurotic celebrity behavior rather than crises of national character. Our tragic misadventure in the Middle East continues with only lightly spoken opposition. And those, such as Sen. Barack Obama's minister, that do speak loudly are condemned by the strident voices of those who insist that their own stark definition of patriotism is the only valid one. Meanwhile, the neutered truth trickles back, shrouded like the coffins of our young servicemen and women. Numbed perhaps, by systematic campaigns of fear and shortsighted reactions, average Americans still do not rise to demand explanations and accountability from their leaders.
Written at the height of World War I, these other words of Tagore speak to the chaotic depravity of the time:
All the black evils in the world have overflowed their banks, . . .
Whom do you blame, brothers? Bow your heads down!
The sin has been yours and ours. . . .
The cowardice of the weak, the arrogance of the strong, the greed of fat prosperity, the rancor of the wronged, pride of race, and insult to man —
Has burst God's peace, raging in storm.
Will the presidential "candidates" speak candidly for the restoration of a national nobility? Will their handlers allow them? It could be argued that it's too late. But with the optimistic enthusiasm of Emerson, we can, perhaps, collectively traverse the "desert sand of dead habit," as well as the sands of the Middle East, under which someone arrogantly proclaimed was stored "our petroleum."
Heroism in opposition to evil is an honored form of sacrificial nobility. But our young military "heroes" serving now at the whims of inglorious captains of "fat prosperity" sadly contribute unwittingly to the "overflowing of evil from its black banks." Let my country awake! It is time; so agonizingly past time.
The enemy is "the other" only as long as there are no mirrors. Patriotism without nobility is unevolved tribalism, the "rancor of the wrong."
So, if my son asks me if service to the country is still important, I would reply, "Absolutely, but consider alternatives to the military, and remember it is your patriotic duty to question authority."
H.C. Schweitzer of Lafayette served in the Marines and the U.S. Army. He is a professional audiologist, businessman, research associate and graduate school lecturer at the University of Northern Colorado.
Ellie