Right On!

In his memoirs of WWII Winston Churchill called the 2^nd World War “the Unnecessary War”. Unnecessary, not that fascism was acceptable, but that the war was preventable; its roots traced not to the evils of Nazism, but rather to “The Follies of the Victors” as he titled chapter 1.

“Gone were the days... when aristocratic statesmen and diplomats, victor and vanquished alike, met in polite courtly disputation, and, free from the clatter and babel of democracy could reshape systems upon the fundamentals of which they were all agreed.”

The Greek philosopher Aristotle, like Churchill, carried little respect for democracy, calling it mob rule, where passions supplant laws as codes of conduct.

Indeed Churchill declares democracy guilty as the underlying cause of the 2^nd World War. The Allies, inspired by their victory, their people hurting, sought compensation for their suffering and enacted repayment plans from Germany which Churchill called ignorant and silly. The victory of democracy over common-sense, of politics over right, is captured eloquently in his sentence: “The multitudes remained plunged in ignorance of the simplest economic facts, and their leaders, seeking their votes, did not dare to undeceive them.”

Mob rule.

We’ve seen Japanese segregated to camps. We’ve seen Americans agree to secret prisons, the expansion of “investigative techniques”, all fueled by passion let loose, willingly unchecked by established law. Today, fearful passions spark the fury of “mob rule” to support partial government control of manufacturers and banks. We see otherwise reasonable Americans upset that Exxon made a 5% profit, while the government, voting itself raises, takes 15% at the gas pump. Now Congress insists on using “Reconciliation”, the process to limit Senate debate to 20 hours, and quickly force wide programs on narrow majorities.

One of the lessons from the end of WWI is that when ignorance combines with passion, as it has with the Iraq War, Abu Ghraib, and the ill-advised stimulus bills, you can be sure a backlash is coming.

On this Memorial Day every American owes an answer of humility to the soldiers beneath the graves who might well ask the question posed by W.H. Auden:

“To save your world you asked this man to die;
Would this man, could he see you now, ask why?”

The backlash has the answer.