“Yet Freedom! Yet thy banner, torn, but flying, streams like a thunderstorm against the wind.”
Lord Byron
Radio commentator Paul Harvey would use the tag line, “It is not one world” when reporting on a news story from elsewhere in the world that particularly offended the sensibilities of what we call civilization. I could almost hear his voice as reports issued forth from Nigeria of the kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls in Chibok, for the great crime of being female and receiving an education. And then to see the leader of the notorious Boko Haram gloating over the abduction as though he had done some grand service to his god, “I abducted your girls. I will sell them in the market, by Allah… girls, you should go and get married… There is a market for selling humans. Allah says I should sell. He commands me to sell. I will sell women. I sell women.”; and how much does he sell them for? Twelve dollars each, and it would seem there is no shortage of customers. It is dismaying that after all these thousands of years there are such dark corners of the world. “It is not one world.” Or is it?
Like clothing that covers the underlying nakedness, civilization is a thin veneer that only serves to hide, not eliminate, the flesh that lies beneath in a society of human beings. Just as we arise each morning and dress ourselves as we have each day before, society must continuously strive to remain civilized to cover the baser parts of our human nature. These men of the Boko Haram seem to us to be be barbarians. This is only the latest of the atrocities they have committed. In July of 2013 they attacked another school killing 42. Then in September, 44 were slain as they slept during an attack on a college. They have invaded seminaries and staged kidnappings on a regular basis, and utilize child soldiers as young as 12 in their mission. To John Kerry’s credit, the State Department has finally designated the group as terrorists, something it steadfastly refused to do under Hillary Clinton. Yes, Boko Haram is barbaric in their tactics, but the motives for what they do are more complex. What they do, they do in the name of Allah, in a misguided attempt to order the society in which they live, proclaiming themselves to be judge, jury, and executioner. They are not sociopathic wild men engaging in rape and pillaging merely for the satisfaction of their greed and lust, but they envision themselves as dread soldiers sent on a mission to restore what they consider to be what is right. Oh, human motivations are seldom pure, but that at least is the wrapping in which these monsters clothe themselves.
It is not one world, yet the temptations that befall men are the same across the globe, and it is but the thin layer of culture that poorly obscures the manner in which those temptations are expressed. Thousands of years of civilization, and man still uses brute force to impose his will. Whether it be the Boko Haram in Nigeria, a madman ruling Nazi Germany, or an out of control government in the United States ignoring its own Constitution; power corrupts. And what power is that? The power to build roads and bridges? To fly to the moon? To heal diseases? …No, it is the power to rule men’s souls. There is yet within us even after all these many years the desire to enslave. Yes, like the Boko Haram, we pretend an excuse for our corruption, we suppose it is always for the good of society, and who better to be the judge than we who are so enlightened? And if people will not be bent to our will, then they must be broken. If they will not submit to our righteous imperative, then we will pass a law, we will impose a mandate, we will drive them from the airwaves, we will put them out of business, we will ostracize them with a scarlet letter, we will label them with a yellow star, we will kidnap them, we will sell their daughters, we will gun them down… we will annihilate them.
I fear for the future of freedom, because it seems to stand against the wind. It is not in our nature to allow freedom to those we disagree with. Even further I see a darkness that comes upon men that is expressed in a range of evil from a desire to control their co-workers, families, and fellow citizens, all the way on a continuum to human trafficking. Abolitionism for modern slavery seems always to stand in the face of a gale force wind. Reagan’s admonition comes to mind,
“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”
As precarious a position as this freedom seems to always be in, it is passed to our children in the words that we speak, and the spirit we sustain. It is alive, and life always finds a way. There is something greater in the garment of liberty that we wear, than the baseness of the flesh that it covers.
IMHO: Until the end it will always be in the mind of men to dominate and enslave each other. It is only in the light of our better selves that we can escape that darkness, set our lust aside, and cover ourselves with the mantle of liberty for all. Many believe that power and control can be exercised over even good people for the benefit of society as a whole, like the benevolent plantation owner who believes his slaves would suffer without him. Even if it were that society could be so ordered and fit masters found, the treasure of freedom is a cost too heavy to pay, and liberty is a prize well worth a bit of chaos.
