Not Like This

By: msnook
Published On: 2/14/2007 7:31:11 AM

I wish I didn't feel like this about our nation's moral standing in the world, but look at our record over the past five years. We stopped working with the international community. We built torture chambers. We started a bad war that killed a lot of good people. We started revoking inalienable rights. Now some among our highest offices are just itching for a third war, and Glenn Reynolds wants us give up even trying to do the right thing. Here's how he feels about the unconfirmed accusations made by the AP and Tony Snow that the "highest levels" of the Iranian Government are supplying weapons to kill American soldiers in Iraq:
[link] This has been obvious for a long time anyway, and I don't understand why the Bush Administration has been so slow to respond. Nor do I think that high-profile diplomacy is an appropriate response. We should be responding quietly, killing radical mullahs and iranian atomic scientists, supporting the simmering insurgencies within Iran, putting the mullahs' expat business interests out of business, etc. [Via Glenn Greenwald, now at Salon]

Greenwald's analysis is thoroughly brilliant, as usual, but I wanted to take this another direction. You see, I like when power flows to good things, and in the world of geopolitics and international relations, so much of the power is coercive, violent, and destructive. But by forming the U.N., globalizing the world economy, establishing trade, diplomatic, and security relationships with countries around the global village, we have fundamentally altered the currents of power. Because of the changes we helped to bring about, most of the power to control (or at least contain) events in the middle east and around the world is soft -- we gain it by making our allies a little more friendly and our enemies a little less hostile, rather than simply by conquering nations and exacting tribute (e.g. Alexander II and Ghengis Kahn).
I'm not the greatest scholar on Christianity, faith, or the teachings of Jesus, (myth, historical figure, prophet, son of God, or what have you,) but if I've learned one thing from the old hippie, it's the power of innocence. It's that people will see mercy, and feel justice -- and they will follow you there. If your ideas are good, people will repeat them; if your policies are reasonable, people will adopt them; if your battle is just, people will join you.

The great tragedy here is that these proto-conservative fascists want nothing more than to be the most powerful nation on earth, but they squander their every opportunity to enhance our influence by trying to exert it in such nakedly wicked ways. They want nothing more than to be the City upon a Hill, of which John Winthrop spoke before the Pilgrims first landed at Plymouth Rock, saying, "For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely... in this work we have undertaken ... we shall be made a story and a by-word throughout the world." But they forget every sentiment of his sermon, and the sermon from which Winthrop drew his inspiration:

"You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid."

We could be the light of the world; instead we're the world's biggest pain in the ass (ask it). We could be showing human-kind that the most powerful nation in the history of history can also be the most innocent. But not like this.

crossposted

Comments



"A city on a hill" (cvllelaw - 2/14/2007 1:02:55 PM)
The notion of a shining "city on a hill" came into our popular speech, as msnook noted, from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.  John Winthrop used the phrase in his remarks to his fellow travelers on the Arbella in 1630 as they were about to set sail for the New World, in a sermon entitled "A Model of Christian Charity."  The entire text is well worth reading, at http://religiousfree.... 

After talkling about the ways in which the colony could fail, Winthrop continued:

"Now the only way to avoid this shipwreck, and to provide for our posterity, is to follow the counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. For this end, we must be knit together, in this work, as one man. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others' necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other; make others' conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. The Lord will be our God, and delight to dwell among us, as His own people, and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways, so that we shall see much more of His wisdom, power, goodness and truth, than formerly we have been acquainted with. We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies; when He shall make us a praise and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, 'may the Lord make it like that of New England.' For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world. We shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God, and all professors for God's sake. We shall shame the faces of many of God's worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us till we be consumed out of the good land whither we are going."

Presidents ever since have tried to use the rhetorical image in their speeches -- John Adams, Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton have all used the image.  Most prominently, Ronald Reagan often spoke during his presidency of the image of the "shining city on a hill."  Nine days before he left office, he spoke of it one last time:

"The phrase comes from John Winthrop, who wrote it to describe the America he imagined. What he imagined was important because he was an early Pilgrim, an early freedom man. He journeyed here on what today we'd call a little wooden boat; and like the other Pilgrims, he was looking for a home that would be free."

For the full text of his farewell address, see http://www.reaganfou...

But if you go back to the original sources, you find that the phrase was NOT meant to represent a place of economic success, or even of political freedom; it was meant to represent a place of charity and community.  Jesus used the phrase immediately after the Beatitudes -- "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth...  Blessed are the peacemakers..."  Winthrop specifically used it to refer to a place of such compelling charity and kindness that it would shine as a beacon to others.  There is no indication that either Jesus or Winthrop thought of the image of a shining city on a hill as a beacon drawing others (as Reagan imagined), but as a place that others would see, admire and emulate.

George W. Bush, predictably, got the metaphor all wrong.  On September 11, 2001, when he spoke to the nation, he said, "America was targeted for attack because we're the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world.  And no one will keep that light from shining."

Neither Jesus nor John Winthrop used the "city on a hill" metaphor as a representation of greatness -- only of goodness.

Now, what shines on the hill is more like the Evil Eye of Mordor.  Not charity, but anger.  Not humility, but arrogance.  Not mercy and peace, but shock and awe.  Not community, but "I've got mine." 

I crave a President who will make our "shining city on a hill" again a beacon of goodness.