Posted by
Frigglesnitz on Friday, October 27, 2006 10:19:42 PM
After reading Kathleen Parker's column (http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/KathleenParker/2006/10/27/dying_to_win), I remembered a letter I have sent a couple of times to "Letters to the Editor" of my local paper.
It was rather long, probably rambling, and probably incomprehensible to all but myself. It was never published. I surrendered to reality and admitted to myself that it was not the stuff of Letters to the Editor that gets published. However, it contained a quote which is not at all rambling or incomprehensible. That is, it is not incomprehensible until one truly begins thinking about all its implications. The quote follows:
Thomas Paine, in his Dissertation on First Principles of Government, December 23, 1791, wrote that "He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself."
It seems to me that Thomas Paine understood something that a number of us plain folk would find incomprehensible. If we are to comport with the high ideals of Thomas Paine, we would of necessity have to guard our enemies from oppression. The problem is that our enemies are so many. Where to begin? And if they all decide to gang up on us, what then? Join them?
Would we begin with Hezbollah? Would we guard Hezbollah from, say, the Israelis? Would we begin with North Korea, guarding it from the sinister South? Would we guard North Korea from China? Would we guard Iran against Iraq? Would we guard Iran against China? Would we guard North Korea against China?
It was right and proper that we protected Kuwait against the plunder of S. Hussein. Thomas Paine would also have believed it right and proper.
It was right and proper that we protected Iraq from its own heavy-handed dictator, hoping that democracy would spring up like dandelions in May.
I still have that hope; however, I am attempting patience and tunnel-vision single-mindedness for a successful Iraq, rather than stomping my foot and demanding that our mission be accomplished yesterday.
I believe that in Mr. Paine's age, it was inconceivable that our United States could ever have so many enemies.
This is a puzzle. What did Thomas Paine mean? Is Thomas Paine obsolete today? I do not want to believe so. I want us to be a country that would "guard even [its] enemy from oppression...."
Who will guard us? Will any other country adopt the high ideals of Thomas Paine?
I wish I had answers.