By Edwin Cooney
Most conscientious people struggle on a daily
basis to understand the world around them.
There are, as I see it, two major types of seekers of understanding: seekers
of truth and seekers of perspective.
Most of my friends, many of them readers of
these weekly musings, are seekers of truth. (All glory to their names!) As a
seeker of perspective, I find in their conclusions serious ambiguities.
Just for fun, I’m about to share with you some
of the public issues that nettle a few of these earnest truth seekers. I’m even going to go out on a limb and generously
provide antidotes for their angst!
Let’s see now, I’ll call this friend “Mr. Radio.”
(He loves NPR, National Public Radio.) However, he has discovered the root of all
evil: religion. Religion, he lately scolds me, is at the root
of most international conflicts and much domestic political turmoil. Not only is religion too often the horsewhip
of the morally self-righteous, it flies in the face of all logic and reality. If only, he insists, people would be rational
and realistic and get over this need to be religious, we would have a much more
peaceful world.
Ah, Mr. Radio, I share your pain. Here’s the reality. Religion is far from the main cause of
domestic and international strife. Although
Mr. Radio is presently quite anti-religion (he also periodically threatens to
stop voting as well!), his interest in money and food (two other causes of
violent conflict) has never flagged!
Another reader of these musings, I’ll call him “Mr.
C” because he’s very proud of his political ideology, is quite preoccupied with
abortionists. Yes, indeed, according to
him abortionists are the root of all evil.
(By the way, this gentleman is quite religious.) To him, the modern Democratic Party, the
party that encourages abortions, has come pretty close to being the root of all
evil. President Obama committed an
unpardonable sin the day following his 2009 Inaugural when he withdrew the restriction
of contraceptives and birth control material which the Bush administration had
made as a part of our aid to Africa program.
According to Mr. C, hundreds of thousands of babies have been murdered
by Barack Obama. That action by the then
new president subsequently muddied everything he has done since he made that
decision.
The difficulty with Mr. C’s judgment is that the
war in Iraq, which he enthusiastically supported, invariably cost the lives of thousands
of God’s little Iraqi babies. Of course,
he will respond that Sadam Hussein caused the war and must be regarded as the
prime cause of these little Iraqis’ deaths. What he won’t look at is the
genuine dilemma -- personal, psychological, social, practical and economic –
that a poor or abandoned mother faces.
Her decision to use abortion to end her pregnancy often is an attempt to
survive very unhappy and often degrading circumstances.
Mr. C’s myopia here, as I see it, is self-righteousness.
He and other “pro-lifers” carelessly trivialize, minimize, and politicize other
people’s personal tragedies. The
abortion question ought to be above politics.
Then there’s my friend “BK,” an unabashed tea partier. BK worries about class warfare. Liberals, of course, primarily cause class
warfare by politicizing the plight of the poor.
Why, he wonders, are the poor the public’s business, especially when they
largely create their own plight through lack of ambition?
My antidote to BK’s assertions is twofold. First, both the rich and the poor are very often
inheritors of their stations in life.
From the first days of this republic, the government has legitimately
protected the path to prosperity for industry and private enterprise by such
means as protective tariffs, tax breaks and subsidizing worthy projects. Adequate assistance to the poor, as I see it,
is ultimately beneficial to private enterprise.
People with money inevitably become capitalism’s best customers. Finally, I think that the greatest national
defense against tyranny, foreign or domestic, is a happy citizenry.
It’s my experience that seekers of truth,
although they invariably enjoy the satisfaction of certainty (which is often
self righteous) too often saddle themselves with a gloomy outlook on the
future. Of course, value judgments on the
practical and moral events of the day, as well as of the leadership that drives
these events, is as natural as breathing. Still, it is vitally important to
remember that all of today’s issues and events will be diluted by tomorrow’s
headlines.
I insist that truth means little unless it
provides you and me the space to objectively evaluate the past and optimistically
anticipate the future with a balanced perspective.
What say you?
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
No comments:
Post a Comment