Tag Archives: freedom

The Royal Ethiopian Regiment

I just finished reading The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves by M.T. Anderson. If the length of the title is any indication as to the length of the prose, be warned. At 550+ pages of 18th century writing by a classically trained slave, this book is a chore to read. It doesn’t help that very little happens. Which is all too bad. It’s a fascinating story of an escaped slave joining up with the British to become part of the Royal Ethiopian Regiment to fight the revolting Colonials.

I was curious about this Royal Ethiopian Regiment, though it probably had few if any actual Ethiopians in it. While the story is fiction, it’s based on fact. Lord Dunmore, governor of Virginia, issued a proclamation that any slaves escaped from rebels would be granted freedom for serving in the British Army. Some 800 were organized into the Royal Ethiopian Regiment, though they were never given much of a chance to fight. They were led into a trap at the Battle of Great Bridge and were later decimated by smallpox. Only 300 of the original 800 survived the eventual retreat to New York.

The story of black Loyalists in the American Revolution is interesting. The title of the book paints Octavian as a traitor, but what choice did he have? Traitor, slave, dead. Black Colonials had no hope of freedom, while the British often offered freedom as a way to encourage recruits and disrupt the colonists. Those promises were eventually honored and some of these black Loyalists were moved to Nova Scotia and later Sierra Leone.

There’s an interesting author’s note at the end of The Kingdom on the Waves that reads in part:

In the course of my research for this book, I have come to believe that the American Republic would not have survived its early years—would not have made it through the War of 1812—if it had not been fueled and funded by two profound acts of ethnic violence: the establishment of slavery and the annexation of Native American lands, both of which practices played a major part in the inception and conduct of the Revolution. The freedom—economic, social and intellectual—enjoyed by the vocal and literate elite of the early Republic would have been impossible if it had not been for the enslavement, displacement and destruction of others.

With so much whitewashed talk of our founding fathers, that’s perhaps a more realistic look. But they’re not alone in their guilt:

But it is easy to condemn the dead for their mistakes. Hindsight is cheap, and the dead can’t argue. It is harder to examine our own actions and to ask what abuses we commit, what conspicuous cruelties we allow to afford our luxuries, which of our deeds will be condemned by our children’s children when they look back upon us. We, too, are making decisions. We, too, have our hypocrisies, our systems of shame.

The Freedom to Disagree

I just finished reading Held at a Distance by Rebecca Haile. It’s a memoir about a woman who lived in Ethiopia until she was 10. Her father was wounded by the Derg in the aftermath of the revolution and her family eventually had to flee Ethiopia. The memoir is her experience returning to Ethiopia as a 36-year-old American.

I’ve been reading the book with the backdrop of the recent Supreme Court decision upholding the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) that has sent people into a tizzy—either expressing dismay at how the country is going down the toilet or complete euphoria that justice is coming to health care.

Full disclosure: Personally, I’m happy with the Supreme Court decision, though this doesn’t seem like a perfect law that’s going to fix the mess that is health care. I hope it’s a step forward. But I find the reaction to the decision more interesting than the decision itself. It makes me wonder how people have reacted to other historic court decisions. Were people this dismayed after the landmark 9-0 Brown vs. Board of Education decision that overturned segregation? (I’m not trying to compare this decision to that one in historic terms, just wondering how people have historically reacted)

All the cries of America going down the tubes seem especially disheartening to me. If anything, the will of the people has spoken. A law was passed by a Congress elected by a majority (multiple times—senators and representatives), signed into law by a president the majority elected, and upheld by a Supreme Court made up of justices appointed by past presidents from both parties and approved by a Senate controlled by both parties. Whether or not you agree with the decision, democracy happened. Complain all you want if you don’t like it, but this is government of the people, by the people and for the people. The law is constitutional, if you don’t like it you have all the legal power of democracy to change it. [Sidebar: And I hope my stance in this last paragraph would be the same no matter how the decision came out. It’s easy to make this statement when “your side” wins.]

Back to Ethiopia
I say all that because that’s what was going through my mind as I started reading about this family torn apart by military and socialist revolution in Ethiopia. When the government was overthrown in 1974, military rulers took over and imposed socialist ideals on an impoverished country. But it was really just a dictatorship disguised as socialism. Anyone who disagreed with the new government was seen as a threat. They were targeted, harassed, attacked and in many cases killed. The Derg’s iron-fisted rule continued until 1991 when they were overthrown. The government that followed is, according to Haile, less violent but more of the same. Dissenters are still arrested, censorship continues and the press is not truly free (I should note here that my understanding of Ethiopian politics is extremely limited and I’m basing all of these statements on Haile’s 2007 memoir. Take it with a grain of salt.)

An obvious lesson from Ethiopian history would be that when you can no longer disagree well with your political opponents, you’ve got a problem. When you vilify your opponents, you’re in trouble. You’re just a step away from outright attacking them. And when that happens you’re no longer pushing for a democratic ideal, you’re forcing your own opinion on someone else.

Today, the Fourth of July, is about celebrating our American Independence. As we celebrate and approach an election in the fall, we seem more divided than ever. But in our division, we must find a way to be united. We must find a peaceful way to disagree with our opponents. Disagree all you like, but democracy means that we come together and the majority rules under the Constitution (i.e., the majority might not have voted to end segregation, but it was still deemed unconstitutional).

Because the end of our independence happens when we’re afraid to disagree.

Dependence Day

Today we celebrate our independence.

But our strength is in our dependence.

We depend on one another. We depend on our armed forces to keep us safe. We depend on family and friends for love, sanity and good times. We depend on employers and clients and customers for our paychecks and livelihood.

The loner is the great American archetype. Personal freedom, personal responsibility, personal choice seems to be our national mantra. It’s so often about me, myself and I. The consumerism that drives our capitalism is all about self.

But independence was only achieved by depending on one another. Freedom is not about selfish gain but what we can have and achieve together. Right now Iranians are flexing their democratic muscle by relying on one another. No man is an island.

Continue reading Dependence Day

Police Raids on Protesters in St. Paul

If you don’t follow my Twitter updates, you probably missed much of the hubbub over yesterday’s police raids in the Twin Cities. In anticipation of the Republican National Convention, police have been raiding homes, detaining people and pulling over buses. Most of yesterday’s raids centered around a self-described anarchist group, the RNC Welcoming Committee. Five or six of their members were arrested on charges of conspiracy to riot and a number of weapons or potential weapons were seized (among them what could be some regular household items, what actually are weapons [slingshots mostly] and what’s just bizarre—buckets of urine, later explained by protesters to be a gray water system and not actual urine).

It’s all kind of bizarre, and as early stories come in it’s hard to know who to believe (like I just blogged, nobody just disagrees, we have to insult, mislead and insinuate).
Continue reading Police Raids on Protesters in St. Paul

A War Broke Out Today

So war broke out. It took me an extra half-hour to get home on the bus today, thanks to the protesters in downtown Minneapolis. Hurrah to your anti-war efforts, you inconvenienced a few thousand poor schmucks. I hope that helps your cause. You could certainly use some help. Someone ought to explain to the poor fools in San Francisco that when you’re arguing for peace, violence is not a very persuasive tool.

Extreme nutcases aside, I’m having trouble understanding the anti-war movement. Now I’m not a pro-military guy. You’ve probably noticed the big feature on the book Iraq Under Siege on the ReALMagazine.com homepage. I wrote that. It’s a bit out of date now, but it’s still interesting. I read the book with some skepticism, but came out with a lot of questions about U.S. policy. Granted Saddam is not a great guy, but we’re no Ghandi.

I have my reservations with war. My selective service card is tucked away somewhere, and if that number was ever called up, I don’t know what I’d do. I would have trouble shooting at my fellow man. My grandpa fought at Iwo Jima, and I respect his sacrifice, but I still approach war with fear, hesitation, and questions, much to the irritation of my own dad.

But despite my aversion to war, I’m just as put off by the anti-war demonstrators. Their complete lack of logic, balance, and inability to present a decent argument are astounding. I can see a legitimate anti-war platform, but I’ve yet to see a protester argue that platform.

They spout off rhetoric about Bush trying to rule the world, trying to run a race war in the Middle East, trying to claim all the oil in Iraq. What a load of crap. The only argument there that has any validity is that the war has to do with oil. It’s fairly legit to think that oil is a motivation. But if Bush was really oil hungry, would he really be promising to use the oil for the Iraqis, to let them have what’s theirs. If it was really about oil, we’d be seizing the oil fields, selling the oil, and paying for our war. But that doesn’t seem to be what’s happening. If anything, oil is a way to pay for rebuilding the damage a war has caused and a way to get a liberated people back on their feet, a motivation that doesn’t exactly exist in a place like Sudan.

Many people are arguing that we shouldn’t be fighting this war because we don’t have international consensus. That’s a decent argument–though I don’t see any protesters chanting about that. The problem with international consensus is that it’s rare. This conflict has dragged on for a long time, and at some point you have to draw the line.

War is not a pretty thing, but it’s inevitable. That doesn’t mean we have to like it or even pursue it, but it does mean that it’s going to happen. We can do everything we can to avoid it, but it will happen. Especially if you value freedom, war is necessary. So many people find it ironic that war is what enables the protesters to protest war. Without the American Revolution, we wouldn’t have the first amendment that gives us the right to petition our government. Without World War II, we might be under Nazi rule. And I don’t think fascism looks too kindly on a ‘puke-in.’

There’s a lot of tough questions the anti-war movement needs to address, and I see very few addressing it. What about Hitler? They tried diplomacy with Hitler and he invaded Poland. What about the terrible things Saddam has done? Do we just ignore those? True, we ignore other terrible things around the world and we end up enforcing justice inconsistently. I agree. But is it better to stop the one massacre you can than to let it happen? True, we often make big mistakes, like selling someone like Saddam chemical weapons. I think we should fess up to them and try to make smarter decisions in the future. U.S foreign policy is fraught with some big blunders. I’m the first to point those out. They make me nervous. But sometimes those blunders were an attempt to keep something worse from happening. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Meddling in El Salvador didn’t come off too well. But taking out the Taliban in Afghanistan seems like a no-brainer.

Sometimes I just wish America would be the world’s police and do it right. Stop the bloodshed in Rwanda and Sudan. End the guerrilla fighting and drug wars in Columbia. But it’s not that simple. I wish it was.

True Christian pacifism is an interesting idea. Jesus talked about peace, and so some Christians think that’s the way to go. The Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Jr. approach that turns the other cheek. You love your enemies, and that doesn’t happen with smart bombs. It’s a great personal philosophy, but I get squeamish when you have to think about nations. I can decide to be non-violent, and take a punch in the gut when it happens. But when it comes to a nation, if you don’t defend yourself, innocent people die. If a nation turns the other cheek, trades flowers for bullets, eats pastries for peace, you have no more freedom. You become a country in occupation. Maybe that’s okay for some people. It works for Switzerland. But I have a feeling most of us freedom-loving Americans would be shot by the invading army pretty quickly. We’d want to speak out, to say what we want, do what we want, and they’d kill you. That’s what turning the other cheek gets you. Loving your enemies is not compatible with freedom. You have to fight for freedom in this world. We can have freedom in Christ, but it’s more of a personal commodity that bears fruit on the other side.

So I’m not liking the anti-war protesters. I sympathize with them, but I wish they’d make some decent arguments. I wish they’d address the real issues. This world is a complicated place, and it doesn’t work to just say can’t we all get along. Because some jerk comes along who doesn’t want to get along, and pretty soon people are dead. You can either stand up and make sure that innocent people don’t die, or you can hold up your hands and be willing to die along with them. On a personal level, one sounds a lot like Jesus. But nations are different, and I’ve never seen that kind of a Christian nation.

It would be interesting to see America the Christian nation, as in the country that makes every effort to be Christ-like, even in the way we wage war (can there be a Christian way to wage war?). But maybe that’s what we’re doing. A “smart bomb” that lands on target more often than a conventional bomb and hopefully destroys the military target more often that it destroys a civilian target seems like a humane advancement. Moving in with humanitarian supplies seems like a Christ-like move.

Maybe it would help if our government made better choices across the board. If we got tough with countries like China that don’t offer freedom of religion. If we stuck up for the fatherless, the widow, and the orphan all across the globe. The prophet cried out for justice to flow down like a mighty water, and maybe that can’t happen until God steps down onto this earth, but aren’t we called to bring justice now, in whatever way we can? We’re certainly not God’s henchmen, and we shouldn’t claim to be, but some things are pretty clear cut. Mowing down your own people is not justice, and that’s a worthy fight.

Oh, the rambling. Sometimes I find myself easily swayed by arguments. Last week I was angry when someone was so incredibly Republican that they refused to see the duplicity in American foreign policy. I don’t like war hawks. But this week I’m angry at the protesters who don’t see the necessity of war in a modern world. There’s a shaky middle ground somewhere, and that’s where I find myself. Raising a flag for peace is a lovely gesture, but it’s also an idealistic one.