A High Road To Travel
A High Road To Travel
By Jackson Kern
Some cite tactical complications. “Much too difficult”, they say, “to intervene directly with military hardware; more often than not we would simply compound the situation and make matters worse, inflame local sensibilities. Not to mention we would surely incur a loss of life. A damned shame really, we do wish there was something we could do.” This commonly heard response is in contrast to the soaring but disingenuous oratory of international diplomatic arenas. One can’t help but admire for its persistence the prolific machine of eloquent but empty condemnation; even softer measures of censure, sanction and isolation seldom take root with vigor. There clearly is a tremendous deficit of political will, and rarely has the disequilibrium between talk and walk been so pronounced.
But what if there is partnership in passivity, and complicity in complacency? There unquestionably is great suffering and injustice in our world, however far removed it may sometimes be. When we fail to actively oppose it then we in fact endorse it. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German Lutheran executed by direct order of Heinrich Himmler, has said it all: “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil... Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” When we fail to obstruct the trail of those who would commit injustice, we do nothing less than to pave their path forward.
The real cause of inaction is quite simple; it is silence. Your silence, my silence. A resounding, even deafening collective silence. It is encouraging and uplifting to see the level of public participation that often swells within democracies during election years. It is equally astonishing to witness the haste with which this great tide of civic engagement recedes as soon as the last polling stations are closed. What we too often forget is that putting our candidate into office is only the first battle in a very long war. It is a war which cannot be won if the troops return to their barracks satiated by the sweet taste of a single victory.
In the United States, the leadership has failed to act time and time again because it could not be convinced that action was genuinely demanded or desired by the American people. Politicians, as all living beings, have certain instincts of self-preservation. Robust confrontation of human rights abuse, be it in the form of soft or hard power, is something that is usually not without certain political risk. As such, it is unlikely to be undertaken unless the American people demands it, and demands it with a loud voice.
High Road for Human Rights(www.highroadforhumanrights.com ), under the leadership of Salt Lake City’s former mayor Ross “Rocky” Anderson, has embarked on a mission to make life much less comfortable for those of America’s elected officials who for too long have enjoyed the silence. Anderson seeks nothing less than a grassroots-level revolution, a revolution which will be waged not with arms but with words.
When America’s senators and members of congress have letters on their desk each day which declare never again, when her newspaper editors are compelled to regularly print articles and columns which command attention and action, and when her men and women refuse to be silent about things that matter, it will then be not the beginning of the end but at least the end of the beginning.
Posted by on 03/21 at 07:08 PM