If I were ever in any doubt
whether my decision to leave the Republican Party was sound, I was given three
reasons this week to rest assured that my decision was the right one, and also
the smart one.
First, there is the so-called coverage of the Fort Hood
shootings on 5 November that has continued throughout this week. There are a
lot of things about this that bug me, and I’m not really sure where to start, but
here goes. Almost immediately after the shooting (and just as predictably and
transparently), the “conservative” media began calling Maj. Hasan a “terrorist”
and what happened at Fort Hood an act of “terrorism.” Now, I’m not the first
one to point this out,[1]
but what happened at Fort
Hood was simply not
terrorism. There is no evidence that he was part of any organized group whose
aim was to influence the civilian population of the United States to pressure the
government to change its policy, his (possible) communication with suspected
radicals for overtly religious purposes notwithstanding. Refusing to label Maj.
Hasan a “terrorist” does not in any way diminish his crime, nor does calling
what he did “terrorism” make the deaths of his victims[2] any less
senseless. This is not the first time this year a shooting occurred on an Army
base. But nobody was calling “terrorism” when it happened the first time.
Apparently it is only “terrorism” when a Muslim is involved, at least according
to the conservative media and the talk shows. Others, however, are focusing on the more pertinent
issues. A British commentator living in Europe
aptly remarked that,
“What Hasan knew -- as everyone in Texas
knows -- is that Texas
has sane laws concerning the carrying of concealed weapons. Texans are free to
be well-armed, that is to say, well-defended. If Hasan had tried to shoot
soldiers at a Pizza Hut or McDonald's, he would have been taken out as soon as
he'd got off his first shot, maybe not by a soldier, but certainly by a
civilian.”[3]
Reading this comment by a British
citizen caused me to reflect for a moment on the sheer insanity of the current state of firearms legislation in the U.K. ,
and inspired me to study the British political system generally. Aside from the
gun laws themselves, there is a lot to be said for the British system. So many
aspects of our own political system that we take for granted, are still taken
for what they really are, in the U.K. For example, the two-party
system. In Britain ,
the two-party system evolved by gradually understanding those who were not in
power, and who disagreed with the government’s policies, as the Loyal Opposition. The recognition that
“parties” could exist who disagreed with the policies of the various ministries
of Parliament (who represent the Monarch), but who nevertheless could be
counted as loyal to the Sovereign, was the basis of what later became the
two-party system. Likewise, our own custom of having the President sign bills
into law is a carry-over of the doctrine of “Royal Assent,” i.e., that the
Parliament could not make law without the agreement of the Sovereign. On the
other hand, two areas where our Founding Fathers sought to distance themselves
from the English tradition was in their extremely restricted use of the word
“treason,” and in their understanding of military power (which directly bears
on their understanding of what it means to “bear arms”). Let me deal with the
second point first. George Washington is as good an example of any here:
“Hence likewise they [‘every part of the Country’]
will avoid the necessity of those overgrown Military establishments, which,
under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be
regarded as particularly hostile to Republican Liberty. In this sense it is,
that your Union ought to be considered as a
main prop to your liberty, and that the love of the one ought to endear to you
the preservation of the other.”[4]
For Washington , and for the Founding Fathers in
general, the right of citizens to bear arms was the surest means of protecting
themselves against tyranny, as their own recent experience during the
Revolution had proven. The Second Amendment itself is based on the 1689 English
Bill of Rights, which acknowledged the right of every Protestant subject to
“have arms for their defense suitable to their conditions and as allowed by
law.”[5] If
anyone doubts that the intent of this legislation was to allow citizens to
protect themselves against a government gone tyrannical, provided of course
that they had already gone through the other proper channels of appeal, i.e.,
the courts, then appeal to Parliament, then petitioning the Monarch, let us
remember that this legislation was adopted one year after English Protestants
forcefully overthrew a Roman Catholic
king (James II) who had acted tyrannically against his subjects. The meaning
couldn’t be clearer.
The Founding Fathers did not like
standing armies because they believed they could be used as supports for – or
means of establishing – tyranny. A “right to bear arms” was necessary in part
because it allowed citizen militias to be formed during a time of crisis that would
in turn make the creation of a standing army “for the common defense”
unnecessary.[6] In fact, Article 1, Section 8 of our Constitution actually forbids the prolonged maintenance of a standing army in peacetime, but I guess conservatives don't think that part of the Constitution is worth "conserving." In light
of this history, it is surely ironic that the denial of Second Amendment rights
to soldiers living on a U.S. military base has resulted in a situation that not
once, but twice this year has allowed a crazed gunman free reign to commit brutal and murderous acts against our troops.
Now, on to the word “treason.”
The Founding Fathers didn’t like the word, and they liked the idea even less.
Article 3 of our Constitution makes it about as difficult to convict a person
of Treason against the United
States as it is to convict a person of a
capital crime in Jewish law. And the Founding Fathers wanted it that way. In
the British system, “treason” constituted an act of disloyalty to the
Sovereign, and the Founding Fathers did not want to create a government that
would allow for American citizens to be executed for opposing the government
after they had just won a hard-fought war against a government that wanted to
carry out that very punishment against the Patriots. And it seems to me, that
in practice, the only thing required to convict one of treason was the mere
accusation of it. Or at least that is how it has been portrayed. One phenomenon
that is well understood in sociology is that when certain social structures or
ideas get suppressed over a period of time, they tend to reemerge later in
another, more insidious form. Is it possible that the word “terrorism” has
replaced the word “treason” and taken over its functions and characteristics?
If Maj. Hasan had opened fire on the same group of people, only this time not
on a military base, but in a civilian marketplace, would that have been
terrorism? And what if, instead of military personnel, Maj. Hasan had shot
civilians in said marketplace? Would that
have been terrorism? What if Maj. Hasan had robbed the grocer in the
marketplace, rather than killing the people in it? Would that have been terrorism? Taking the word “terrorism” and trying to
apply it to every crime in which a Muslim is involved, whether or not that
particular Muslim has anything to do with a known terrorist organization, is the first step down the
road toward institutionalized prejudice. If we keep thinking of the issue like
this, ten years from now a guy who robs a gas station will go on trial for
treason just because he happened to be Muslim. That is not the kind of country
we were supposed to have. We need to get away from umbrella words like
“terrorism” or “Al-Qaeda,”[7]
and start thinking about these issues more critically and less emotionally. Now, in theological terms, as a Christian I have very little sympathy with Islam. The one they call a "great prophet" is the one we recognize to be God Incarnate. That being said, I have no doubt that there are many Muslims whose righteousness would put that of numerous Christians to shame. I am also frequently appalled at the abysmal ignorance of Islam displayed by both the Right and the Left in this country. Islam is every bit as diverse as Christianity is, and the two main sects in Islam, the Sunni and the Shi'a, are as different from each other as Protestants are from Roman Catholics. So one cannot take the mere fact that Maj. Hasan is Muslim, and then try to judge his character on that basis. Such arguments are circular (because they assume the very thing they attempt to prove), and they miss the point. Attempts to cast Maj. Hasan as the victim instead miss the point as well, and quite badly. Maj. Hasan is of course responsible for his actions, and the blame for them lie first of all with him. But there is a larger issue to consider here, and it has nothing to do with religion or terrorism. The
real point of all this is not that Maj. Hasan is a Muslim; the point is that in all
probability the Army royally screwed up here,[8]
and nothing could dishonor the memory of the victims at Fort Hood more than for
the military to make no changes to its policies concerning the mental health of
American solders, or the maintenance of safety on U.S. bases here and abroad. This also takes us back to George Washington's fears about the maintenance of a permanent military establishment (and this is not intended disrespectfully toward the individuals who happen to serving in the military at the present time): we should hardly be surprised after having spent billions upon billions of dollars for decades on end maintaining an organization whose sole purpose is to be a killing machine, that such a machine can and often does produce psychopaths who are capable of killing without remorse. If they can murder their fellow soldiers without batting an eye, they can murder the very civilians they've sworn to protect, too, and that is exactly the kind of situation (albeit on a larger scale) that the Founding Fathers feared. This is not to say that there are not many fine and respectable men and women currently serving in our armed forces by any means, but only to point out that these kinds of problems are intrinsic to such institutions and can never be divorced from them.
Second, it turns out the Republican health care bill includes
provisions to fund abortions, too.[9]
This is yet another example of the fact that Republicans get elected by support
from pro-life conservatives, who in turn get stabbed in the back almost
immediately once said Republicans get in office. (A partial exception to this
trend was George W. Bush, as far as the abortion issue is concerned, though not
much else.)
Third, Fox News outright lied
about the size of rally held in opposition to the pending health care
legislation, a fact that we now know about thanks to Jon Stewart.[10]
So, since these three events have
unfolded toward the end of last week and into this week, the feeling that I
have done the right thing by being political nonaligned has only been
strengthened and confirmed.



