STEADY, AMERICA…STEADY, EDDIE — WE’VE BEEN HERE BEFORE

By Edwin Cooney

You wouldn’t have wanted to be in my presence last Monday afternoon when I received an email a friend sent me. To say the least, I was a grouch!

This email was a commentary in praise of Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s second invitation to Muslims who reside in Australia and insist on living under Sharia Law to get out of the country.

Even more, it suggested that Prime Minister Rudd was being courageous in his stand. However, as I saw it, Mr. Rudd was acting more like a petulant adolescent than a wise statesman. This commentary went on to state that if only American and Canadian leaders would speak and act like Kevin Rudd, we’d all be better off.

Much of what Mr. Rudd had to say was a rational appeal for assimilation on the part of immigrant Muslims into Australian society, but there were aspects of this appeal that were clearly draconian. For instance, it asserted that the Australian government should institute a spying mechanism in mosques for the purpose of weeding out potential terrorist activities such as those which occurred at the hotel in Bali back in November 2008. However, what was particularly offensive to me was the suggestion that American leaders would be heroic if only they would imitate Prime Minister Rudd’s version of government reactionism here in the United States. In other words, for our own protection it must be our public policy to spy on Americans in church.

From what little I know of Kevin Rudd, he’s a reasonably progressive, slightly leftward-leaning Labor Prime Minister. His appeal to immigrant Moslems to assimilate is not in the least unreasonable or offensive. However, the tone of his stand is clearly intolerant and lacking a sense of genuine inclusion. What I find especially galling is how Prime Minister Rudd’s position is apparently being exploited by anti-immigrant groups here in America who are obsessed by suspicion of those who are foreign born.

America’s history is riddled with suspicion of people who are foreign born who aren’t of Anglo-Saxon or Protestant heritage. America was certainly less than welcoming to the Irish who fled famine and British tyranny in 1848. Of course, we couldn’t help it: after all, they were Roman Catholics and Catholicism was “popery.” Everyone knew that the Pope would establish an Irish Catholic in the White House. America would then become a province of a newly established Roman Empire. These sentiments were expressed most vividly by American Nativists or members of the “know nothing” party of the 1850s.

In the Twentieth Century, there was the “Red Scare of 1919” and the anti-Japanese sentiment in the wake of Pearl Harbor, something which is highly regretted today
In the 1950s, McCarthyism flourished out of our frightened reaction to Communism.

In 1948, two of the leading Republican presidential candidates debated during the GOP primary campaign in Oregon over the question “should the Communist Party be outlawed?” Former Minnesota Governor Harold Stassen took the affirmative view and New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey asserted that it would be both dangerous and contrary to who we are to outlaw the Communist Party.

Dewey was right: either we believe in others’ liberty to express their feelings and live their own lives or we don’t believe in liberty at all. However, no doctrine or religious law -- whether it be Marxism or Sharia Law or anything else -- can supersede the Constitution of the United States. No responsible administration should allow a conspiracy to gain sufficient strength to compromise our form of government. That we must be vigilant at home and abroad about dangers to our security is not debatable. However, there’s a distinction between tolerance and appeasement. The question is: When are we powerful?

All of us have been frightened at one time or another in our lives. When we’re frightened, anger often dominates every thought we have and, consequently, everything we do. That’s why FDR was right when he asserted that “…the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

Beyond that, we know that seldom, if ever, is any conflict resolved through rejection. Occasionally it is necessary to terminate unhealthy relationships. However, all relationships, whether personal or global, ebb and flow. Most Americans distrusted Great Britain from the American Revolution until World War II. Now most Americans consider England to be part of us. Too often, we prematurely give up on personal relationships out of fear and then wonder why we’re lonely. Even more, too often we see power in our own frustration and anger.

What was disturbing to me about that email was its surrender to intolerance. In the moments right after I received it, I felt utter despair for the future. The world is simply too small today to encourage others to hate us by telling them to get lost. The truth is, whether we like it or not, we can only be powerful when we’re conscientiously engaged with those who may occasionally cause us discomfort.

Let’s see, now: “The only thing I may legitimately hate is…” Steady now, Eddie, you’re no FDR!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY