For We Have Been Here Before, 2001/09/17:08:55
tom's home ~*~ tom's index |
MACDONOUGH'S SONG Rudyard Kipling WHETHER the State can loose and bind In Heaven as well as on Earth: If it be wiser to kill mankind Before or after the birth- These are matters of high concern Where State-kept schoolmen are; But Holy State (we have lived to learn) Endeth in Holy War. Whether The People be led by The Lord, Or lured by the loudest throat: If it be quicker to die by the sword Or cheaper to die by vote- These are things we have dealt with once, (And they will not rise from their grave) For Holy People, however it runs, Endeth in wholly Slave. Whatsoever, for any cause, Seeketh to take or give, Power above or beyond the Laws, Suffer it not to live! Holy State or Holy King- Or Holy People's Will- Have no truck with the senseless thing. Order the guns and kill! Saying--after--me: Once there was The People--Terror gave it birth; Once there was The People and it made a Hell of Earth. Earth arose and crushed it. Listen, O ye slain! Once there was The People--it shall never be again! |
|
History
respond responses |
Don't Disarm the VictimsLooking around the room, I can see nearly a dozen objects that I can turn into deadly weapons in under a minute. Given more time, that number goes up substantially. And I'm not, let it be said, a particularly violent person--I've never studied martial arts, haven't struck someone in anger (or in any other state of mind) since I was a teenager, and spend most of my time thinking about philosophy and physics and software, not war and violence. I just have a good imagination and a mechanical turn of mind.I'm hardly alone in this, which is why the reports today of airlines confiscating nailfiles and paperclips and banning pointed sticks from carry-on baggage suggests a certain lack of perspective. I've said before that I'm not too keen on guns on aircraft because of the risks posed by accidents and idiots. But a truly astonishing number of things can be turned into sharp pointy objects with a little work, and banning them is neither feasible or useful. I can say with certainty that in any environment more complex than a padded cell any sufficiently imaginative person can come up with a handful of usefully deadly weapons on a few moments notice, much less with the opportunity to plan ahead a little. Just thinking about the fixtures in a typical airplane washroom is enough to give one pause. That flimsy flap on the waste disposal, for instance--snap it off, fold it diagonally a few times back and forth and it'll work-harden and break, giving you a nice jagged edge and a wickely sharp point. A sufficiently imaginative terrorist is capable of turning the aircraft itself into a source of weapons. Fortunately, so can a sufficiently imaginative passenger. I'm comfortable saying this because I'm sure the enemy have already thought of it, and a dozen other things besides. My discomfort with guns on aircraft comes not from a belief that passengers ought to be disarmed, but from the well-known difficulty of controlling the effects of gunshots. But no one has ever been killed by someone who "was just cleaning my knife and it went off" so the same reservations don't apply to weapons where a human being is the sole source of energy. Hmm... I just worked out how to manufacture a slingshot, including ammunition, capable of deadly force using nothing but what I'm standing up in and a few odds and ends on my desk. I think I'll keep that one to myself. Disarming the victims is never the appropriate response to crime. MacDonough's Song"The People" of Kipling's poem are any collective. The poem prefaces the story "As Easy as A.B.C.", which is set in a future where easy transportation has allowed people to disperse widely, where "crowd making" is a criminal activity, insofar as there are crimes, and the last remnants of collective identities are withering away. Democracy, in the sense of individuals being subordinate to the collective will, is considered a perversion.There will be those quick to point out (there always are, somehow) that the Jews are "a people" in the relevant sense, and this is no doubt true. It would be flagrantly irrational for them to think otherwise of themselves, given how many people armed with malicious intent and pointed sticks have treated them that way. The Jews are "a people" because their enemies have made them so, and even in the face of this they have created a secular, modestly pluralistic society in Israel. Without the constant hatred of their enemies reminding them of it, the "peoplehood" of the Jews would wither away in a few generations. The more important reminder of "MacDonough's Song" is that we have been here before. Kipling saw the dangers of collectivism even while urging civilized nations to take up "the white man's burden." We now know that civilization and barbarity have nothing to do with the color of a person's skin, the language they speak or even the kooky religion they belong to. But likewise, we know that when one group annoits itself as destined to rule that we have a demon in our midst and we should not hesitate to destroy it by all necessary means. In this case, the most important means is education for women in the nations most hostile to us. The Nazis said they just wanted the Sudetenland, and we believed them. They also said they wanted to kill all the Jews and rule the world, and we did not believe them. Militant Muslims are saying the just want the United States to abandon Israel so they can kill all the Jews. And they are also saying they want to destroy the West and rule the world, incidently depriving women of anything resembling equal status along the way. We should take them at their word, and respond appropriately. |