 |
| Open Theism Discussion Board > Public Forums > Let’s solve the problem of evil > The Reality of War and Need for Civility | Forum Quick Jump
|
| 
DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 5/30/2003 6:55 AM (GMT -6) |   | May 29, 2003 Page 15A
Graduates: Face up to war-torn world you're entering
By Samuel G. Freedman
As a student, a parent and now a professor, I have sat through more than 20 graduation ceremonies, hearing everyone from governors to astronauts deliver the commencement address. This year more than ever, events have made me consider the speech I would give to the nation's 1.3 million college graduates.
To the graduating class of 2003, I say: Turn off your cellphones. Pause your MP3 players. Shut down your PDAs. In just a few minutes, you'll collect your diploma, flip your mortarboard's tassel and step into the rest of life. I need your attention just long enough to talk about the greatest generation.
By which I mean yours.
I don't blame you if you're bored to tears by the mere mention of the Greatest Generation. Those men and women who survived the Depression and fought and won World War II are as distant from you in years as a World War I veteran was from me when I graduated college in 1977. And the way their deeds have been celebrated in books and movies and TV shows, they seem an unreachable model, too ideal to be quite real.
But, you know, that generation didn't know it was great. It didn't crave what Franklin Roosevelt called its ''rendezvous with destiny.'' It had all of the normal distractions and diversions of teenagers and college kids. It was as ordinary and escapist as you.
Just a few months ago, doing research for a book, I happened to read some back issues of a college newspaper from the fall of 1941. Keep in mind, we're talking about the months leading up to Pearl Harbor. The Japanese advancing through Asia. The Germans in control of Western Europe and surging into Russia. You'd think impending war would have been the major concern of any draft-age person.
Well, that's not what the college paper showed. The front-page articles were about fraud in the student-government election, the upcoming contest for ''Most Photogenic Coed'' and Benny Goodman's appearance at the fall carnival. The humor column had a crack about the student ''who told his draft board he has a heart murmur. It keeps murmuring, 'Don't go, don't go.' ''
A few months later, though, the newspaper was reporting on college boys who were already at war. Their educations and careers didn't resume until 1945 or 1946. Some, of course, never made it home.
I have to admit that generation had little choice in the matter. The draft required millions of men to serve, and their absence pushed millions of women into defense industries. Still, at some level, they chose to meet the challenge of their times.
Will you meet the challenge of your generation?
As a professor, I live immersed in campus life, and it has given
me some worries. What I've felt from students so often since the world changed on Sept. 11, 2001 is the desire for it all to go away, the wish for a simple formula that would make the threats vanish. If only we didn't invade Afghanistan. If only we let the United Nations deal with Iraq. If only the Israelis would give the Palestinians a state. If only, if only, if only.
Instead of the pointed yet reasoned debate that college ought to be about, I've found intellectual cowardice. At my own institution, Columbia University, a professor said at an anti-war teach-in that he wished for American troops to suffer ''a million Mogadishus.'' The university president denounced the professor's statement, and so did faculty members at the teach-in. But 3,000 student listeners sat in silent compliance.
And if the alternative consists of censorship and intimidation -- the way the anti-war author Chris Hedges was shouted down and almost physically assaulted as he spoke at Rockford College in Illinois this month -- then it reduces patriotism to ''know-nothingism.''
The truth is that the threat we face, the existential threat, isn't going away. In the past few weeks alone, there have been suicide bombings in Russia, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Israel. The bombings' victims have been Muslims and Christians and Jews, virtually all of them civilians. Most of the perpetrators, we have to conclude, are Islamist terrorists, the Nazis of our time.
It didn't make the murderers stop when the U.S. announced it would remove its troops from Saudi Arabia. It didn't make them stop when Ariel Sharon and Abu Mazen met for the first Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in more then two years. It didn't make them stop that Russia and Turkey both opposed the American invasion of Iraq. Nuances and subtleties are lost on fanatics.
Compromise is exactly what they want to destroy.
By the fact that you're all graduating from college today, it's pretty clear most of you won't be fighting in the military sense. But your intelligence, opinions and talents will be essential to the staying power of America in this new war, which could go on for decades. And be assured that all the enemies -- al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas and their ilk -- count on the West being too flabby and fearful to last.
You also have to make sure the America you protect is worth the protecting. Take a look on the Web at the transcripts, just declassified, of the secret interrogations of alleged communists conducted by Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Innuendo, intimidation and character assassination: Those hearings are a lesson in the mistakes that a free society can't be permitted to repeat.
I always thought Osama bin Laden missed the whole point of America when he sent his suicide attackers against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. He saw the USA only as money and armies. If he'd really wanted to destroy the symbols of this country, he would've struck at the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.
What bin Laden missed, though, we could damage beyond recognition ourselves.
Amid the temptations of bigotry and suspicion, amid the very real danger of terrorists within and without our borders, we've got to find a way to preserve civil liberties and sustain immigration. Instead of withdrawing from the non-Western world, you'll need to engage it in the battle of ideas.
So could you become the teachers, the journalists, the diplomats, the First Amendment and public-interest lawyers? When you hear hatred from the right or the left in the world outside your campus, can you find your dissenter's voice, the voice you lost amid the intellectual conformity of the academy or the jingoism of the mob?
I hope so. Not so much for my own sake; I'm already middle-aged. But for the sake of my children -- and the ones you'll have, so much sooner than you think.
Samuel G. Freedman, associate dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, is a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.
Prayer from Kenya
From the Cowardice that dare not face new truth,
From the Laziness that is contented with half-truth,
From the Arrogance that thinks it knows all truth,
Lord Deliver Me.
Edited by - DLW on 06/10/2003 8:12:24 PM | | Back to Top | | |
 |
honorman
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 1137
| Posted 5/30/2003 9:27 AM (GMT -6) | | Chris Hedges tried to shove his "leftist leanings" down the graduates throats. Those students should be applauded for kicking his butt off the podium.
| | Back to Top | | |
|
DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 6/1/2003 10:03 AM (GMT -6) | | Civility, being like Christ, requires that one loves ones enemies and opposes any use of violence rather than reasoning to confront what we believe is false-teaching.
dlw
Prayer from Kenya
From the Cowardice that dare not face new truth,
From the Laziness that is contented with half-truth,
From the Arrogance that thinks it knows all truth,
Lord Deliver Me. | | Back to Top | | |
|
honorman
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 1137
| Posted 6/1/2003 4:04 PM (GMT -6) | | They booed him off the stage. He deserved to get his butt kicked. Sometimes a little physical pain can bring a person's attention to where it should be.
Tell that to Jesus when he was whipping the money-changers out of the temple.
Edited by - honorman on 06/01/2003 9:05:11 PM | | Back to Top | | |
|
Springs
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 636
| Posted 6/1/2003 5:34 PM (GMT -6) | | Perhaps he used the whip on the animals and not on the men?
Jn 2:14 "In the temple courts he found men selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money.
15: so he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned thier tables." (NIV)
"It was fine." - Lee Marvin in Cat Balou. | | Back to Top | | |
|
honorman
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 1137
| Posted 6/1/2003 5:59 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
|
honorman
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 1137
| Posted 6/1/2003 6:01 PM (GMT -6) | | I think if you cross check this with Luke 19:45, 46, it seems pretty clear to me that he was whipping the sellers.
| | Back to Top | | |
|
Iconoclast
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1227
| Posted 6/1/2003 6:26 PM (GMT -6) | | Luke 19:45-46 And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold, saying to them, "It is written, 'My house shall be a house of prayer'; but you have made it a den of robbers."
Seems like a stretch honorman. This rendition doesn't mention animals or the whip. One could construe that those two go together from that. Also - it is doesn't say He drove them out by whipping them. It seems to me that would be big news if Jesus was physically violent to another person.
thanks,
Iconoclast
"The benefit overran the merit the first day, and has overrun the merit ever since. The merit itself, so-called, I reckon part of the receiving." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Edited by - Iconoclast on 06/01/2003 11:27:42 PM | | Back to Top | | |
|
DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 6/2/2003 8:22 AM (GMT -6) | | Context, context, context...
Jesus, if he did use a whip, was punishing people who were making a lot of money off of people's religious devotion, while taking up the only space in the temple where gentiles, non-Jews, had traditionally been allowed to enter.
This is radically different than some anti-war person espousing their views at a lecture.
dlw
Prayer from Kenya
From the Cowardice that dare not face new truth,
From the Laziness that is contented with half-truth,
From the Arrogance that thinks it knows all truth,
Lord Deliver Me. | | Back to Top | | |
|
honorman
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 1137
| Posted 6/2/2003 9:43 AM (GMT -6) | | Not from where I am coming from...perhaps Hedges will be more inclined not to shove his views down people's throat.
Icon,not a stretch at all. How do you think Jesus drove the people out? By preaching to them? By politely asking them to leave...I am not one, such as DLW, that believes that Christian ethics exclude violence. Sometimes a little physical pain can impress upon a person the need to change...you guys truly need to get away from this "20the century liberal view" that God is against violence. God uses violence upon occasion when it suits his purpose.
| | Back to Top | | |
|
ReasonableDoubt
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 655
| Posted 6/2/2003 9:45 AM (GMT -6) | | | If God uses violence does that mean humans are supposed to too? And how do you analyze when to use violence other than in protection of self, family, property (to some degree)? | | Back to Top | | |
|
DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 6/2/2003 11:28 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Not from where I am coming from...perhaps Hedges will be more inclined not to shove his views down people's throat.
One can signal that someone is shoving unreasonable arguments down your throat in other ways, like leaving or asking questions that point out what suppositions were being made.
quote:
Icon,not a stretch at all. How do you think Jesus drove the people out? By preaching to them? By politely asking them to leave...I am not one, such as DLW, that believes that Christian ethics exclude violence.
Did you catch any of the exchanges between me and Electra? This does not characterize my views. However, the turn of the Century Christian Economist, Richard Ely, does have interesting quote where he considers the prevalence of torture in Christian Europe. Basically, it was rationalized as the torture being of nothing in comparison to what someone would experience in hell, if they lost their salvation(I.e., by rejecting the existing institutions whose purpose was to ensure that salvation.).
At any rate, this obscures the reality of the problem of order, whereby we consider how sin is so pervasive that it affects the leadership of our ecclesiastical and secular institutions. All of which should make one wary of giving someone an unchecked power to determine whose "salvation" is in danger and thus may be amenable to being saved through torture.
Same thing here. Someone spouting off against the war or war in general can be made to realize that their views are not being received well in a civil manner.
quote:
Sometimes a little physical pain can impress upon a person the need to change...you guys truly need to get away from this "20the century liberal view" that God is against violence. God uses violence upon occasion when it suits his purpose.
It is not God, but Christians claiming to speak/act with the authority of God, whose ability to use violence that needs to be checked.
Besides, the State is s'posed to be the only one that has the right to use violence, anyways...
dlw
Prayer from Kenya
From the Cowardice that dare not face new truth,
From the Laziness that is contented with half-truth,
From the Arrogance that thinks it knows all truth,
Lord Deliver Me. | | Back to Top | | |
|
honorman
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 1137
| Posted 6/2/2003 12:55 PM (GMT -6) | | RD: at the times, yes. God used violence at times and I believe his followers are called to do so as well at times.
| | Back to Top | | |
|
DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 6/3/2003 10:54 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
RD: at the times, yes. God used violence at times and I believe his followers are called to do so as well at times.
The area of dispute here is over what sort of fallible answers do we give to when those times are...
A public forum, where people are supposed to be setting out their viewpoints, is probably not the place.
dlw
Prayer from Kenya
From the Cowardice that dare not face new truth,
From the Laziness that is contented with half-truth,
From the Arrogance that thinks it knows all truth,
Lord Deliver Me. | | Back to Top | | |
|
ReasonableDoubt
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 655
| Posted 6/3/2003 12:25 PM (GMT -6) | | We're a nation of laws and we must follow the laws. Vigilante-ism is decidedly un-Christian. Legally we can only use violence in immediate protection of self, others, and possibly property (burglary). Even so only "reasonable force" is allowed.
If someone kills your brother, it is illegal for you to hunt down that person and kill him. That is the state's job, as DLW says. | | Back to Top | | |
|
ReasonableDoubt
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 655
| Posted 6/3/2003 12:26 PM (GMT -6) | | | And "a little physical pain" constitutes a fifth degree assault, at least in my state. | | Back to Top | | |
|
honorman
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 1137
| Posted 6/3/2003 12:36 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
|
honorman
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 1137
| Posted 6/3/2003 12:38 PM (GMT -6) | | I believe what the Christians throughout the world are doing (practicing their religions in many places where it is illegal) is vigilantism...hmmm, maybe we should obey the laws and forget about actually doing what is right...
| | Back to Top | | |
|
honorman
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 1137
| Posted 6/3/2003 12:39 PM (GMT -6) | | A little fifth degree assault never hurt anyone 
| | Back to Top | | |
|
DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 6/3/2003 12:39 PM (GMT -6) | | No, but "Justice is Mine, sayeth the Lord".
And, we of course are also partially responsible for what is legal.
dlw
Prayer from Kenya
From the Cowardice that dare not face new truth,
From the Laziness that is contented with half-truth,
From the Arrogance that thinks it knows all truth,
Lord Deliver Me. | | Back to Top | | |
|
ReasonableDoubt
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 655
| Posted 6/3/2003 12:41 PM (GMT -6) | | Honorman, you jump to a huge conclusion. I'm talking about the use of VIOLENCE and force- that is illegal, that is wrong except where justified by the law.
How do you go from that to "so anything that is legal is righteous"? Of course not.
But anything that is violent (with certain exceptions) is illegal and is morally wrong.
Practicing Christianity does not involve violence, does it? | | Back to Top | | |
|
DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 6/3/2003 12:43 PM (GMT -6) | | quote:
I believe what the Christians throughout the world are doing (practicing their religions in many places where it is illegal) is vigilantism...hmmm, maybe we should obey the laws and forget about actually doing what is right...
Stay on topic,
One can risk physical and economic harm in breaking unjust laws, but that is totally separate from arbitrarily deciding that someone deserves some fifth degree harm.
Now, if they were going to hurt/kill someone else, that may be different. But that is far removed from the issue that started this link...
dlw
Prayer from Kenya
From the Cowardice that dare not face new truth,
From the Laziness that is contented with half-truth,
From the Arrogance that thinks it knows all truth,
Lord Deliver Me. | | Back to Top | | |
| Forum Information | Currently it is Monday, November 09, 2026 1:36 PM (GMT -6)
There are a total of 97,718 posts in 6,040 threads.
In the last 3 days there were 0 new threads and 0 reply posts. View Active Threads
|
Forum powered by dotNetBB v2.42EC SP3
dotNetBB © 2000-2026 |
|
|