Biting the hands that protect us
by Blair Warren
This is a followup to my recent post regarding Mark Cuban.
I am reading a book called The Path Not Taken - Reflections on Power and Fear by Dr. Allen Wheelis (1915-2007) and stumbled upon the following excerpt:
Those persons who arrive at the intermediate ranges of power have clean hands, white lace cuffs. They are doctors, jurists, writers, scientists, artists, professors, poets. They delegate to others the bloodier, the more immediately cruel and exploitative aspects of power. Thereby they create a space around themselves in which they can flourish the gentler sentiments: love, empathy, pity, even self-sacrifice. Those gentler sentiments then gradually constitute a morality which condemns the unfettered will to power.
People of this sequestered moral group increasingly criticize those more distant agencies which executive the will of the state, thereby becoming estranged from the source of their security and their affluence. Power becomes alien to them. They see it as brutal, abhorrent. They say the state is immoral - which it is. Increasingly they use their influence to restrict the state in its exercise of power over its constituents and over other states.
Thus an enclave of the privileged, who have distanced themselves from the bloody hands to which they owe their privileged state, articulates a morality that would manacle those hands.
A powerful society can afford, may even support and defend, such an enclave of the morally fastidious. But if the message of this minority should persuade the whole, the whole would find itself in peril. *
This reminds me of the scene in the film A Few Good Men when Col. Nathan Jessup, portrayed by Jack Nicholson, says:
Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who’s gonna do it? You? You, Lieutenant Weinberg? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago and you curse the marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: that Santiago’s death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don’t want the truth because, deep down in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall.
He’s right. I do want people like him on that wall. And I suspect that those who are so quick to condemn our protectors do as well.
I am not saying those who protect us shouldn’t have rules of conduct. But I am saying that we, the average citizens of this country, shouldn’t be so quick to condemn them for doing what they think needs to be done on our behalf.
Yes, we all have the right to criticize those who protect us. But we should take care not to take it too far lest we lose this right altogether.
P.S. If my previous Mark Cuban post is any indication, this post should inspire some of my readers to post angry comments or send belligerent e-mails telling me how stupid I am and that I no longer think for myself. I only point this out because some people don’t think I realize I risk losing readers by posting things like this. I do. And though I hate losing readers, I hate writing on eggshells more.
* This passage is nearly twenty years old and was written regarding power and society in general, not military situations in particular. I am solely responsible for making the association between this passage and our current conflict. I do not know, or mean to suggest in any way, what Dr. Wheelis’ personal beliefs were regarding our current circumstances.
Posted on Tuesday, September 18, 2007 at 09:09 AM
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
For more information visit www.BlairWarren.com
