From Here & Back Again
By Jim Coufal
(Cazenovia, NY – Jan. 2012) In his gardening column (Dec. 28), Daniel Marvin takes time to ask, “Who Permits us the Freedom to Celebrate Christmas?” His answer is that it is the military, and he says, “If you do not respect our armed forces, I highly recommend you leave this country right away.”
This is a variant of the “America: love it or leave it” principle, and while I understand Marvin’s sentiments, I must say, “Enough!”
What is the logic of “love it or leave it,” including if you don’t respect the military, leave the country? The basic premise seems straightforward: “If you don’t love it, leave it.” I love New York state, defined as its people, places, culture, history, beauty and variety.
I don’t like the state’s government, its corruption, its gerrymandering, over-taxing and general dysfunction. In any case, I will not leave New York just because I don’t like or respect its government, and which is the real New York in any case?
The basic premise seems to say one doesn’t have the right to dissent, to be part of the “loyal opposition,” because any opposition is seen as disloyal and requires leaving. This is little better than being physically or criminally persecuted for your opposition, which also occurs.
The statement that “dissent is the highest form of patriotism” is often attributed to Thomas Jefferson, but this may be another urban myth. The oldest usage of the phrase is apparently found in the 1961 publication, “The Use of Force in International Affairs,” which asked, “If what your country is doing seems to you practically and morally wrong, is dissent the highest form of patriotism?”
The phrase became popular during the Vietnam era, when war dissenters were also told to love it or leave it. Interestingly, the dissenters proved to have more sense than the “patriots” and are often seen as heroic figures now.
Would slaves have been freed and civil rights laws have been passed without dissent? Would women and Native-Americans have achieved the vote without dissent? Would our country have even been created if there had not been dissent?
The “leave-sayers” will say that dissent must be fair, just, reasonable and, of course, legal. The dissenters will agree. In this case, the latter might add that, unlike love, respect must be earned. It is not sufficient to give respect to the military just because of the institution of the military or just because one is a member of the military.
Herein lies the problem: what is fair, just, reasonable and legal may each be open to interpretation.
But free speech remains and civil disobedience remain.
Taking respect to mean a feeling of great approval or liking, I believe the military has a mixed record in regard to earning our respect. First, the military does not permit us the freedom to celebrate Christmas, or Hanukah, Ramadan, Kwanza, sSolstice or any other holiday.
It does, as Marvin says, safeguard our abilities to celebrate holidays and live our American values and, for this, I thank military members and the military as an institution, and I honor them for the sacrifices they have made.
In our government of the people, for the people and by the people, we give ourselves the rights we enjoy through the principles established in our constitution. To reiterate, I understand the purposes of and the need for the military and in that sense I “respect” it. I do not necessarily like what it does or always sees what is done as reasonable, just, fair or legal.
Thus, in another sense, I do not “respect” it. I think staying and working to change what I find objectionable to be more logical and more patriotic than leaving.
It’s fair to elaborate on what I find objectionable about the military. It starts with the complicity involved in the “industrial/military complex” President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us about many years ago. A complex of sweet deals that includes such things as overpriced hammers and toilets, hiring mercenaries at outrageous prices and allowing them to do things outside the law pertaining to military operations, misusing military intelligence operations to sway government into wars (witness John F. Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs, George Bush and the Iraq war), massacring civilians (Mai Lai, Iraq, Afghanistan), the shooting of American civilians (Kent State), maintaining torture prisons, even the pepper spraying of college students by the police (another military organization Marvin doesn’t list) and constant cover-ups.
Remember, all of these and other objectionable actions are done by the military members who are, as Marvin points out, “bound by oath and have moral and legal obligations to obey the lawful orders of the officers and leaders appointed over them.”
This also fits with Marvin’s profession of his Christian beliefs, which say, “Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is not authority except that which God has established” (Rom 13:1; see also 1 Pet 2:13-14 and others).
Two things strike me here, especially in view of the term “lawful orders.” First, how do Christians square this with the knowledge of how many wrongs would have gone without redress if these biblical commands were adhered to closely? How do they square this with the fact that the “I was just following orders” argument failed at Nuremburg and is discredited in international law?
Perhaps I am more pro-liberty, pro the constitution and anti-government than I am anti-military, but I will not leave the country I love.
Jim Coufal of Cazenovia is a part-time philosopher and full-time observer of global trends. He can be reached at madnews@m3pmedia.com.
