Last night, having viewed the movie "The Railway Man" I encountered a "fearful symmetry" a day or so after the Senate
released a report five years in the making (which I have not read) on
"enhanced interrogation techniques," i.e., torture.
Don't people (a nation, a community) (don't I, don't you) have both a right and an obligation to ask:
What are we? What do we espouse? What do we stand for? What defines us?
I do not pretend these are simple questions evoking simple answers. Nor
do I pretend to speak with authority, as I type this in a comfortable
chair in a public cafe in a free society. (Allow a digression: are you
"free" if you are cajoled, motivated, nudged, coerced every day by
forces you do not recognize or acknowledge? I'm not talking conspiracy
or paranoiac whisperings. I am referring to the relentless onslaught of
consumerist stimulation that tickles our fancies and enslaves our
wallets.)
I propose the asking (and potentially answering) of these and
like-minded difficult but profound questions as part of our civic
discourse -- beyond pieties, cliches, jingoism, chauvinism, and
bromides.
As G.K. Chesteron said, " 'My country, right or wrong' is a thing that no patriot would think of
saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, 'My mother, drunk
or sober.' "
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