"All that's necessary for the triumph of evil is for enough good men to do nothing" - Edmund Burke.
It has been the case since the dawn of time that those
with the might make the rules; I have no evidence to the contrary in contemporary
times. So what to do, always make sure that might resides with those who are intent on
good. Good is a somewhat nebulous term, with plenty of opportunity for interpretation.
Here is one definition for good people – people who are seeking to provide
liberty to people, people who seek to influence human behaviour through a
process of enlightening others, people who actually believe love matters,
people who can look at the truths of others and accept them as being as valid
as their own truths, people who hold humanitarian concern as paramount and
people who have the strength to protect these goods by whatever means
necessary.
All faiths, all humanitarians, all people who are
enlightened, have the capacity to pursue these goods and to withstand dogma that
would have them venture into a violent sphere to promote one dogma over another
dogma. The challenge is that the world’s population is made up mostly of the indoctrinated
rather than the enlightened; even personally, I hold a Christian bias due to my
exposure to the Canadian narrative and my family history – even though I make an effort
every day to see the other side. When one is faced with tribalism, dogma and
survival as the life equation, reason is no longer an option – one is faced
with calculations like, conform to the immediate dogma totally or all that one
loves is destroyed – conformity at this point is the only way forward. People who want
to control populations always want conformity to dogma, this is the antithesis to
democracy, secularism or pluralism. The desire for compliance is in no way
peculiar to Islam, it resides in the hearts of many in western democracies, in
the hearts of people who would rather impose belief rather than to let belief
develop as people are exposed to the cultural tapestry there to teach us all.
One needs grounding, mine was Christian and as such, all other thinking is held
juxtaposed to Christian teaching – the difference between being a bigot and enlightened
resides in one’s ability to permit belief to migrate as the facts change. The challenge
with extremists is they are locked into one belief and they will kill to keep
it or forward it; for them, the only solution is to subdue them and the only mechanism
to do so is to be in possession of greater might.
Josip Broz Tito ruled Yugoslavia with an iron hand, an
iron hand that insisted that factions got along – an enforced pluralism if you
will. Under his leadership, the various factions, Muslims to Christians lived in
close quarters, across the street from one another, peacefully. Absent the
presence of Tito’s hegemony, Yugoslavia “balkanized” into several states and
factional war resulted in a massive human tragedy. What is the moral of this
story, having a Hegemon works, even when the hegemon is a benevolent dictator.
Yugoslavia disintegrated before the very eyes of the present-day United
Nations, why, because the United Nations is a place of talking as opposed to a
place of action. One human tragedy of massive proportions after another transpires
while United Nations watches, why, because the United Nations is a place of
talking as opposed to action. Winston Churchill said, there is no use in having
Judges and Magistrates absent a constabulary – passing judgement is a mere
thought, acting on that judgement changes outcomes.
The Hegemony in the world now is NATO, the military might
of a collection of the most progressive and prosperous nations in human
history. Is NATO flawed, certainly, do we need to be able to kick nations out
as easily as they are brought to membership. NATO – or a military force –
that has as its master human choice is the Hegemony we need to support, build
and improve. There are a cross-section of Nations that are members of NATO,
Turkey is one of note given recent events, the organization is clearly dominated
by the secular democratic imperative. The world hegemon now, from a single
nation perspective, is the United States, the United States hegemony commenced
shortly after WW2, please make an objective assessment of our world now and
post WW2, and exercise judgement.
OTHER THINKING ON THE SUBJECT
No comments:
Post a Comment