Essais
For the first time today, I was ashamed to be an American. This really hurts me to say. I was reading Montainge’s Of Canibals when I realized that modern day America is spoiled and is actually contributing to the worsening world situation.
“So we may call these people barbarians, in respect to the rules of reason, but not in respect to ourselves, who surpass them in every kind of barbarity.”
I’ve never really supported the war in Iraq (but I do support the war in Afghanistan and would support war, if for the right reasons, in Iran). I do, however, support my country in any endeavor it may pursue simply because, when it all boils down, my country is all I have. What we have done/are doing to certain peoples in Iraq, what some would call “spoils of war,” is simply horrible. Do we really have the right to say their way of life is completely wrong? We’ve destroyed their country, destroyed their hope, and shammed their religion.
“All our efforts cannot even succeed in reproducing the net of the tiniest little bird, its contexture, its beauty and convenience; or even the web of the puny spider.”
“…there is nothing barbarous and savage in that nation, from what I have been told, except that each man calls barbarism whatever is not his own practice; for indeed it seems we have no other test of truth and reason than the example and pattern of the opinions and customs of the country we live in. There is always the perfect religion, the perfect government, the perfect and accomplished manners in all tings. Those people are wild, just as we call wild the fruits that Nature has produced by herself and in her normal course; whereas really it is those that we have changed artificially and led astray from the common order, that we should rather call wild. The former retain alive and vigorous their genuine, their most useful and natural, virtues and properties, which we have debased in the latter in adapting them to gratify our corrupted taste.”
After I thought on this, I realized that this doesn’t make me less patriotic, but completely the opposite.
Machiavelli said in The Prince, “…there are two ways of contending, one in accordance with the laws, the other by force; the first of which is proper to men, the second to beasts. But since the first method is often ineffectual, it becomes necessary to resort to the second…for everyone can see but few can touch. Every one sees what you seem, but few know what you are, and these few dare not oppose themselves to the opinion of the many who have the majesty of the State to back them up.”
So: where exactly does that leave America? Man/beast/barbarian? Who is to judge, and which judgment is the right judgments?