A truly patriotic American is….

 

Photo of a peace flag by the US Capitol during the peace march on 2007-01-27.
Image by Rrenner at English Wikipedia and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license.

In my view, a truly patriotic American is an activist dedicated to the goals outlined in the Preamble of our Constitution.  This entails the effort to “form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…”

I also believe that anyone who enjoys any benefits from living within a country purporting to be a democracy and providing at least some access to a democratically-based political process has the obligation to participate in that process—in particular by voting.

So, how do you become a patriotic activist in the United States? First of all you need to evaluate the current state of our system.  Ask yourself some questions: is everyone in the country treated justly?  If not who commits the injustices? Who suffers from the injustices?  What will it take to reduce injustices—better laws? Reform of the judicial system? Who has the power to make those changes?  How can you influence those power-holders?

And how about domestic tranquility?  Is the United States aglow with domestic tranquility right now? If not, what individuals and groups are dividing Americans against themselves?  What can be done to bring people together?

When today’s politicians use the word “defense,” are they really talking about defense or is the term “defense” a euphemism for terms such as conquest, imperialism, hegemony, domination? Do current governmental defense programs help or undermine the goal of defense?  And would not the ultimate defense be living in peace?

And then we have the “general welfare” and “blessings of liberty”? Does having a higher level of income inequality than all other “developed” nations contribute to the general welfare of people in this country? In the long run, can it contribute to your welfare? How about racist, sexist, ethnocentric language, or attacks on people of color, or Jews, or Muslims, or Catholics, or immigrants? Do they contribute to the general welfare? Do they secure the blessings of liberty for you, your children, your grandchildren?

If not, then pay attention to the promises of this year’s candidates for political office.  Do they offer adequate solutions to the challenges of democracy? Do some seem more tuned in to the problems than others?  Think carefully, but act too.  Vote.

 

 

Gaza: Time to take sides

International Symbol of Nonviolence.
International Symbol of Nonviolence.
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Author=Jmarchn

The news out of Gaza has been horrendous, overwhelming, tragic, heart-breaking. Death upon death. Destruction after destruction. Loss of life; losses for families, communities, the human race. It is easy to feel rage and horror, depression and defeat. Will the violence ever end?

Although the outlook for peace and reconciliation may seem at a discouraging low, there are also some hope-inspiring stories that should not be ignored and buried in these deadly times:

 

  • Following the strategy that helped bring about an end to apartheid in South Africa, a group of Palestinians have organized a Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (BDS) as an alternative to violence.

 

  • And closer to home there is Seeing through Walls, an awe-inspiring group of Jewish and Muslim artists who got together in 2010 to create a mosaic peace mural that “expresses our vision of peace, justice and hope for the Israeli and Palestinian people.” Please visit their site, view the photos of this magnificent project in progress, and feel your hope rejuvenated.

After considering these stories, you decide:

Which side are you on, man? Which side are you on?

If you’re on the side of violence, you’re home free. No need to do anything. There are enough people  benefittng one way or another from armed conflict and other sorts of atrocity to stoke hatred, distrust, and misunderstandings and thereby keep the violence going.

On the other hand, if you’re on the side of nonviolence, there’s a lot you can do. Donate your time, your money, your expertise to the efforts to find nonviolent solutions to the conflicts in Gaza and elsewhere. Your voice counts, it matters.

Make yourself heard.

Say “Never again” to genocide

Today, April 8, is Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Nazi concentration camps map
Image in public domain.

Although the United Nations General Assembly chose January 27 as annual International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the United States Congress established its own National Days of Remembrance, which are observed this year from April 7 to 14.

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has declared this year’s theme to be “Never Again: Heeding the Warning Signs.”

Please take at least a few minutes today to honor the victims and survivors of the Nazi genocide by watching the videos linked in this post. They are compelling reminders of what the U.S. and the other democracies did as the Nazis began their attack on Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, and other convenient scapegoats—that is, virtually nothing.

Occasionally students wend their way into my Psychology of War and Peace class declaring that the U.S. entered World War II to rescue the Jews—waving flags emblazoned with an appalling level of misinformation. “Never again” will not be achieved by Americans invested in the mythology that their government has always been the crusader for democracy, humanity, and…liberty and justice for all.

The films are also powerful reminders that genocides, a scourge on human society for centuries, continue to plague the earth. If we want to say “never again” to genocide, to what other factors do we have to say “never again”? Racism? Poverty? Revenge? Humiliation? Send us your suggestions.

Whatever our religion, ethnicity, or skin color, we can all do more to resist the forces that push us to hate, dehumanize, blame, and scapegoat others who are identified by people in power as our enemies.

We are all related. We are all one family.

Time for Cain to stop killing Abel.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Warning: Do not behave like our perpetrators

[Note from Kathie MM:  Today we welcome guest contributor John Hess, who has been an anti-war activist for 40 years, and worked for over 30 years in the construction business. He is currently a full-time faculty member in English and American Studies at UMass Boston, where he is a member of the executive committee for  the faculty-staff union.]

I found this video the other day and thought it well worth passing on. It is a fascinating comment on the situation in Palestine/Israel from Dr. Hajo Meyer, a Jewish Holocaust survivor.

Meyer observes that Jews were “the pioneers of interhuman ethics” and that he “wants to wake the world” to speak out against the horrible treatment of the Palestinians by Israel.

One of the enduring strengths of Judaism is its strong moral tradition and it is in this tradition that Meyer urges Israelis “not to behave like our perpetrators” (the Nazis) toward the Palestinians and calls on the world to speak out against this behavior.

Watching the video led me to think about both the Holocaust and the situation in Palestine/Israel today.  It seems to me they are in some important ways linked, so I took a long look at a book I haven’t glanced in quite awhile, The Cunning of History by Richard L. Rubenstein.

The Holocaust, Rubenstein said, was “a thoroughly modern exercise in total domination that could only have been carried out by an advanced political community with a highly trained, tightly disciplined police and civil service bureaucracy” (p. 4).

Rubenstein provides a warning that it is well worth heeding today: “One of the least helpful ways of understanding the Holocaust is to regard the destruction process as the work of a small group of irresponsible criminals who were atypical of normal statesmen and who somehow gained control of the German people, forcing them by terror and the deliberate stimulation of religious and ethnic hatred to pursue a barbaric and retrograde policy that was thoroughly at odds with the great traditions of Western civilization” (p. 21).

In his view, “The Holocaust was an expression of some of the most significant political, moral, religious and demographic tendencies of Western civilization in the twentieth century. The Holocaust cannot be divorced from the very same culture of modernity that produced the two world wars and Hitler” (p. 6).

What parallels do you see between the Holocaust and the situation in Palestine–or even other parts of the world?

John Hess, Senior Lecturer in English and American Studies, University of Massachusetts, Boston