How Soon Till High Noon?

Heard Chris Hedges on Minnesota Public Radio last night... speaking with much venom for the Christian Right. Some of his outrage may have a measure of legitimacy, but what does he advocate as a solution? He cites Karl Popper's The Open Society & Its Enemies, stating that we (meaning The Left, or the intellectual Elite) may have a right, even an obligation, to silence "the intolerant" for the sake of the greater good of society. Hedges argues that the Right must be silenced by action.

What concerns me here is that we live in a Machiavellian era where Virtue is neither a supreme value or a relevant one. Bare knuckled power is the bottom line. Crush the opposition by any means possible before he crushes you. It's the new Cold War, only a war of ideas, with no apparent attempt at understanding. The objective is to win.

The Right takes the same stance. Both sides appear to be arming for battle... waiting for High Noon. Who will draw first?

August 21, 2007

Verbal vitriol has long been a part of the American political scene. (Read John Adams, by McCulloch.) Much of it is rhetoric. It concerns me, however, when I hear the shrillness in Hedges' delivery. He is a man with an aim: move his audience to action. And what action is it he wants them to take? He spells it out. Not only does he quote the Karl Popper passage in his speech, he uses it in the introduction to his new book.

"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or the revival of the slave trade, as criminal."-- Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (reprinted as the introduction to Chapter One in the book by Chris Hedges called, "American Fascist: The Christian Right and the War on America.)

And so we are marching toward a faceoff. Each side professing that Tolerance and Free Speech, long time American virtues, may be no longer important. Each side professing to its followers that the other side cannot be trusted, and at some point we'll need to make a grab for power because if we don't, they will. Are we heading toward a gunfight at the O.K. Corral?

Machiavelli, in The Prince, essentially states that it is better to win by lying, cheating and stealing than it is to lose. The end justifies the means in Machiavellian morality. This is a world view at odds with the Bible and Christian ethics. And for this reason, it cannot be embraced as an action plan by the true Christian, whether politically conservative or liberal.