| Another example of the model you suggest are the Amish people here in the United States. Quite a few people among those of politically conservative mind resent the Amish because they steadfastly refuse to serve in the military on the grounds it is against their religion. Anyone who has seen the movie "Witness", however, knows that they will also resist engaging in violence even in their own defense.
My parents and I were talking about this on the telephone just last night. Both my parents are practicing Christians (at this point, I am probably at best a nomimal one) and registered Republicans (like nearly everyone else in my family apart from myself). One of the topics that came under discussion (it seems like a tangential subject, but I don't think it is) was the protests of some people in their church against the pastor both for refusing either to have a U.S. flag inside the church or to endorse one candidate or the other from the pulpit -- his reasoning (quite intelligent, in my opinion) being that the church should answer to God first and the country second. Some people in this country make no secret of the fact that they think the church and the state should be for the most part one and the same -- but there is a danger with that which most of them either refuse to acknowledge or entirely fail to see. If the church and the state are one, a declaration of war suggests implicitly that God must be in favor of the war -- and this may not necessarily be the case. It is hard to convincingly argue that there is much difference between that statement and those which the terrorists are currently using to justify their actions.
I mentioned to my parents that I've never really trusted GWB...but I didn't start to actively fear him until he began making remarks essentially claiming that anyone who did not agree with the US response to the terrorist attacks would essentially be regarded as in league with the terrorists and a potential enemy. To my way of thinking, there is a distinct potential for this reasoning to become as great a threat in its own way to innocent people as those of the terrorists. After all, I recall that Sweden and Switzerland were both officially neutral countries during WWII, and what Hitler aspired to accomplish was easily on a par with the aims of al-Qaeda. Should those countries have been forced against their will to ally themselves with one side or the other? Would that not in a sense have been an injustice of its own? The claim that people must agree with whatever we do or risk being considered an enemy contains within it an implicit statement that we are both justified in whatever we do and incapable of making a mistake -- but that reasoning has been used by many a dictator to justify many an atrocity. |
