June 29, 2009
MANN TALK: Moral Equivalency Is Eye for an Eye?
By Perry Mann
President Obama recently gave a speech in Egypt. It was wide-ranging, covering many areas of history of the relations of the Muslims and Christians and the present conflicts in the Middle East. The speech provoked commentaries from right and left. One expected commentary of criticism came from Charles Krauthammer, who has done little else but belittle caustically the words and actions of the President since his inauguration.
Krauthammer observed with regard to Obama’s first European trip that while there he had been “acting the philosopher-king who hovers above the fray meditating” between America and the world. And after the President’s appearance and speech in Egypt, Krauthammer was happy to learn that even the left agrees that “Obama’s standing above the country, above --- above the world. He’s sort of a God.” Krauthammer’s second criticism is that Obama creates false moral equivalencies and he has a “disturbing ambivalence toward his own country.”
Krauthammer, like his ilk, believes that one should love this country whether it is right or wrong and that moral equivalency is an eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth. He would weigh and count with precision the rights and wrongs done by nations, balance them to determine which is righteous and which is evil. He is myopic to his countries’ wrong doings and acutely sees the wrongs of foreign countries. He has jingoistic and Pharisaical elements in his makeup. He is unaware, or if he is aware it doesn’t tell, that the Carpenter from Galilee preached and lived by a moral code that rejected moral equivalencies and preached the return of good for wrong.
Krauthammer: “That’s the problem with Obama’s transcultural even-handedness. It gives the veneer of professional sophistication to the most simple-minded observation: Of course, there are rights and wrongs in all human affairs. Our species is a fallen one. But that doesn’t mean that these rights and wrongs are of equal weight.”
Who can look at all history and list all wrongs perpetrated by the Muslim world against the Christian world and all the wrongs perpetrated by the Christian world against the Muslim world and declare that one or the other is the greater sinner? Such an undertaking is not only beyond the capacity of humans to do and to judge but it is Pharisaical and unworthy of a world that has had a better lesson to inspire and to follow for two millennia. Further, who but a partisan politician or a purblind columnist would view the world and history from the center of his egoism rather than from the moon of his imagination and understanding that humankind has a common origin and a common destiny?
Obama stood above the world and viewed it from afar in the manner of a statesman. He did not view it as a politician from a county courthouse or from a state capitol or from the view of a neo-conservative hot to shock and awe any upstart regime. Iraq should have instilled some inhibitions even in the most feverish imperialist. Krauthammer yearns for the callow, nation–centered and catastrophic views of Obama’s predecessor.
A more moderate view of Obama’s Cairo speech is found in a commentary by Brandt Ayers of the Anniston Star. “After eight years of obvious favoritism to Israel, the president is signaling that a new administration wants to be even-handed. But how far can he push Israel when it has 14 million Southern Baptist allies --- more than there are Jews in the entire world? Only one fact is, or ought, to be clear. The historic policy of an eye for an eye does not work. It has blinded Arab and Jew from seeing the path to peace.”
The Southern Baptists’ alliance with Israel is based on the Holy Book of the Jews: “God curses those who curse Israel.” And the moral equivalency of eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth has its origin in the same book, a book that the Baptists believe is the inerrant words of God. Such a moral world view is faith-based, narrow, ignorant and totally the antithesis of the Holy Book of the Christians as revealed in the Sermon on the Mount.
The world has had enough of nationalism and its offspring imperialism, enough of exceptionalism and triumphalism from this nation and any other nation. History abounds in the bones of nations so constituted. It is time in history more so than ever that the leaders of nations of the world rise above national boundaries to see the world as a globe and to take cognizance of all the peoples of the world, their histories and current view, with the goal of bringing this globe of people to a better understanding of all humankind. And to forget weighing rights and wrongs of history and to bury in history a moral equivalent that is tantamount to an eye for an eye.
Not only has an eye for an eye blinded Arab and Jew from seeing the path to peace, the prospect and use of it has blinded all nations from seeing the path to peace. Obama has begun, it would seem, a movement toward a morality in which eye for an eye is no longer a concept on the peace table.
* * *
Perry Mann is a former teacher, a lawyer, a former prosecuting attorney of Summers County and a columnist for Huntington News Network. He lives in Hinton, WV.
The Japanese could inquire of this nation: “What is the moral equivalency of Hiroshima?”
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MANN TALK: Moral Equivalency Is Eye for an Eye?
By Perry Mann
President Obama recently gave a speech in Egypt. It was wide-ranging, covering many areas of history of the relations of the Muslims and Christians and the present conflicts in the Middle East. The speech provoked commentaries from right and left. One expected commentary of criticism came from Charles Krauthammer, who has done little else but belittle caustically the words and actions of the President since his inauguration.
Krauthammer observed with regard to Obama’s first European trip that while there he had been “acting the philosopher-king who hovers above the fray meditating” between America and the world. And after the President’s appearance and speech in Egypt, Krauthammer was happy to learn that even the left agrees that “Obama’s standing above the country, above --- above the world. He’s sort of a God.” Krauthammer’s second criticism is that Obama creates false moral equivalencies and he has a “disturbing ambivalence toward his own country.”
Krauthammer, like his ilk, believes that one should love this country whether it is right or wrong and that moral equivalency is an eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth. He would weigh and count with precision the rights and wrongs done by nations, balance them to determine which is righteous and which is evil. He is myopic to his countries’ wrong doings and acutely sees the wrongs of foreign countries. He has jingoistic and Pharisaical elements in his makeup. He is unaware, or if he is aware it doesn’t tell, that the Carpenter from Galilee preached and lived by a moral code that rejected moral equivalencies and preached the return of good for wrong.
Krauthammer: “That’s the problem with Obama’s transcultural even-handedness. It gives the veneer of professional sophistication to the most simple-minded observation: Of course, there are rights and wrongs in all human affairs. Our species is a fallen one. But that doesn’t mean that these rights and wrongs are of equal weight.”
Who can look at all history and list all wrongs perpetrated by the Muslim world against the Christian world and all the wrongs perpetrated by the Christian world against the Muslim world and declare that one or the other is the greater sinner? Such an undertaking is not only beyond the capacity of humans to do and to judge but it is Pharisaical and unworthy of a world that has had a better lesson to inspire and to follow for two millennia. Further, who but a partisan politician or a purblind columnist would view the world and history from the center of his egoism rather than from the moon of his imagination and understanding that humankind has a common origin and a common destiny?
Obama stood above the world and viewed it from afar in the manner of a statesman. He did not view it as a politician from a county courthouse or from a state capitol or from the view of a neo-conservative hot to shock and awe any upstart regime. Iraq should have instilled some inhibitions even in the most feverish imperialist. Krauthammer yearns for the callow, nation–centered and catastrophic views of Obama’s predecessor.
A more moderate view of Obama’s Cairo speech is found in a commentary by Brandt Ayers of the Anniston Star. “After eight years of obvious favoritism to Israel, the president is signaling that a new administration wants to be even-handed. But how far can he push Israel when it has 14 million Southern Baptist allies --- more than there are Jews in the entire world? Only one fact is, or ought, to be clear. The historic policy of an eye for an eye does not work. It has blinded Arab and Jew from seeing the path to peace.”
The Southern Baptists’ alliance with Israel is based on the Holy Book of the Jews: “God curses those who curse Israel.” And the moral equivalency of eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth has its origin in the same book, a book that the Baptists believe is the inerrant words of God. Such a moral world view is faith-based, narrow, ignorant and totally the antithesis of the Holy Book of the Christians as revealed in the Sermon on the Mount.
The world has had enough of nationalism and its offspring imperialism, enough of exceptionalism and triumphalism from this nation and any other nation. History abounds in the bones of nations so constituted. It is time in history more so than ever that the leaders of nations of the world rise above national boundaries to see the world as a globe and to take cognizance of all the peoples of the world, their histories and current view, with the goal of bringing this globe of people to a better understanding of all humankind. And to forget weighing rights and wrongs of history and to bury in history a moral equivalent that is tantamount to an eye for an eye.
Not only has an eye for an eye blinded Arab and Jew from seeing the path to peace, the prospect and use of it has blinded all nations from seeing the path to peace. Obama has begun, it would seem, a movement toward a morality in which eye for an eye is no longer a concept on the peace table.
* * *
Perry Mann is a former teacher, a lawyer, a former prosecuting attorney of Summers County and a columnist for Huntington News Network. He lives in Hinton, WV.
The Japanese could inquire of this nation: “What is the moral equivalency of Hiroshima?”
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Make HNN Your Homepage (IE Users Only)
