“History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.”
Dwight D. Eisenhower
“We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.”
Benjamin Franklin
“Why do I say this?” Nels Gudmundson asked, moving nearer to the jurors now and leaning toward them, too. “I say this because as an older man I am prone to ponder matters in the light of death in the way that you are not. I am like a traveler descended from Mars who looks down in astonishment at what passes here. And what I see is the same human frailty passed from generation to generation. What I see is again and again the same sad human frailty. We hate one another; we are the victims of irrational fears. And there is nothing in the stream of human history to suggest we are going to change this. But – I digress. I confess that. I merely wish to point out that in the face of such a world you have only yourselves to rely on.  You have only the decision you must make, each of you, alone. And will you contribute to the indifferent forces that ceaselessly conspire toward injustice? Or will you stand up against this endless tide and in the face of it be truly human? In God’s name, in the name of humanity, do your duty as jurors. Find Kabuo Miyomoto innocent as charged and let him go home to his family. Return this man to his wife and children. Set him free, as you must.”
David Guterson, Snow Falling on CedarsÂ
I am surrounded by fog this morning. Here, on the Farm, it is thick enough to taste, thick enough to blur even the outlines of the pines across our driveway, thick enough to be a brooding physical presence which may prove to be the essence of the day. It originates from the nearby river; it occupies every nook and cranny that the morning light has on offer. In it lies the lure of mystery.
But another fog lies just behind the physical one – a moral fog having no physical presence, but which is even more dense, even more defining of the day, even more mysterious since it has no discernible source save that of fear.  The heart of its mystery lies in the fact that it reappears throughout history with astounding regularity, despite the lessons we ought to have learned from having to defeat it at enormous cost whenever it reasserts itself. The heart of its mystery lies in bullying, and the societal fear that gives bullying its opportunistic credibility.  The heart of its mystery lies in our foolishness and our ignorance, in our urgent longing to be safe from the things we are hardwired to fear. The heart of its mystery lies in the fact that evil always seeks center stage and in the predictability with which humanity always greets its reappearance. The heart of its mystery lies in our all-too-ready willingness to allow ignorance to prevail over knowledge whenever evil gets too near the spotlight.
This morning finds one candidate for president asserting that we need a national database of all Muslims living in America, whether born abroad or at home. It is not clear whether he actually believes in the necessity of such a thing, and if I were a betting man I would bet good money that he does not. For he is the consummate opportunist; for he is the embodiment of those who seek to use fear to their advantage – a palpable bully with enough street sense to comprehend society’s moods and to say whatever it takes to advance himself, who will wield fear shamelessly in his attempt to seize power, in his attempt to gain center stage for himself rather than for a considered set of shared ideals.
His story seems plausible to some in the face of their fears, in the teeth of an inexplicable reality. After all, how are we to defend ourselves from an evil we cannot understand – the willingness of some not only to engage in the mass murder of innocents, but to take delight in the process – if we don’t act and act now? His answer is to counter evil with evil, to suspend our rationality, to overlook the civil rights of an easily identifiable minority tasked by means of ignorance and fear with being responsible for the inexplicable, to take the easy road of blaming others for an enormity that we are constitutionally incapable of comprehending.
This has happened before. In America, it happened in Salem in the 1600s; it happened  throughout the long decades following the Civil War when we hung strange fruit from southern trees, burned churches, and vilified and humiliated an entire people; it happened in the 1940s when we gathered up our Japanese citizens and put them in concentration camps solely because of their ancestry; it happened again after 9/11 when we carefully assigned colors to our levels of fear. It happened in Europe in the mid-twentieth century in the form of the Holocaust; it’s happened across time in Europe and Asia in the form of pogroms committed wherever and whenever those in power or those seeking power needed an easy whipping boy to explain their lack of judgment or ability to rule effectively. It’s happened in Africa and in South America. It’s happened wherever the human species has come to rest; it happens whenever the herd feels threatened, and bands together to defeat anyone or anything it can identify as the source of incomprehensible evil. It happens whenever we fail to understand the truth of evil, whenever we seek easy answers to something we deem too complex to consider in the face of a perceived immediate threat, whenever those in power or aspiring to power seek to enhance themselves by offering simplistic solutions to satisfy a massive unease whose source is always shifting and murky, whenever immediate action born of ignorance is deemed better than a time-consuming, well-planned, considered response.
Never mind whether the chosen action will work, for something must be done, and done now. Damn the high road; damn the rights our Founders saw as sacred, saw fit to embody in the Bill of Rights as a brake upon the injustice that seems to follow power wherever it goes and whoever wields it. In the face of such a threat, we must have action for the sake of action.
Only later – only when the evil is no longer close to center stage – have we taken the time to apologize. Only after many of those assigned the role of whipping boy have died or have been tortured or imprisoned have we recognized the error of our ways. Only when it is too late for some of our victims to hear our apologies or for us to gather together enough resources to offer an effective apology to those who have been abused have we come to regret our actions. Only when Mordor is once again a mere rumor have we deemed it safe enough to return to our principles.
We must ask ourselves now – right this very minute – whether it is possible to stand up for our principles in the teeth of despair. This is a time for decision, for determining who we, as a people, really are. The moral fog is gathering again, just as it will do again at some unknown time in the future. We have been given yet another opportunity to prove ourselves. If God is your judge, then you must ask yourself whether you will serve graven images or Him, and will obey not just those of his lessons you deem convenient, but all of them; if reason is your judge, then you must ask yourself whether the actions we are pondering make sense in the light of our accumulated knowledge and our stated principles; if the mirror is your judge, then you must ask yourself whether you will like what you see once you’ve cast your lot.
But one thing is surely true at all times such as these, times when the herd instinct is at the height of its power – each of us must choose for ourselves if reason is to have any chance of holding sway over ignorance and fear.
What’s your choice? For it’s certainly time to raise your hand and be heard.
