Category Archives: ‘Tis of Thee

The Crucible: Our national play

Posted on by
7

Most people are aware that “polls” show a truly bizarre number of Americans question whether or not the President of the United States is a citizen of the country he leads.  I don’t want to get into the specifics of this current climate of suspicion, i.e. from the partisan angle, but I do have another interest.  After reading this Timothy Egan column yesterday, I was left with a question he doesn’t address. 

Just a little bit of history repeating....

 Why do we do this all the time? 

Let’s start with the fact that our county is not very old.  By global standards we are still in utero.  So we don’t really have the track record as a society and as a people from a national perspective that some countries do; but what we have suggests to me that we are pretty freaky-deaky, haunted-house-lovin’, “what was that sound” kind of scaredy cats on a cyclical basis. 

Allow me to elaborate. 

Arthur Miller’s seminal play, The Crucible, is still studied in American high schools but apparently is not being particularly well taught.  If it were, one has to wonder if we seriously would be seeing columns like Egan’s.  Consider: 

The Crucible is a dramatization of the Salem witchcraft trials that took place during 1692 and 1693. Miller wrote the play as an allegory to McCarthyism, when the US government blacklisted accused communists.  Today it is studied in high schools and universities, because of its status as a revolutionary work of theater and for its allegorical relationship to testimony given before the House committee on Un-American Activities.  (EDG note: McCarthy’s activities are often confused with this House Commitee.  The McCarthy era and this House Commitee are two distinct historical references with related themes.  See links below.) 

I remember the way the hair on my body stood up when I learned about the House Committee on Un-American Activities.  About who Joe McCarthy was and what happened in the United States only the decade before I was born.  I could hardly believe it was real, but today as I live my adult life in 2010 I realize the next generation is going to have the same experience with what is happening right now. 

Perhaps the generations just after the Salem witch trials got cold chills, too.  It appears, however, that our goose bumps don’t last long.  We are very good at refusing to see ourselves doing the same thing over and over again, and of turning away from the obvious.  

When we get threatened, we freak out.  Full-on, outta your mind, freak out. 

As a people, it seems we are perfectly willing to take the very slim chance that we are right in our suspicions, and to risk a phenomenal amount of character “capital” in the process. 

In Salem, it was a similar gig.  Throw a suspected witch in the lake.  If she drowns, she wasn’t a witch.  If she floats, she’s a witch.  Burn her. 

In the play, the character John Proctor is pressed to death.   This was the process of placing giant slabs of rock on top of a human being to try to force confession and/or to kill the person.  When asked if the allegations against him are true, Proctor says only two words:  “More weight.” 

This is not a partisan issue.  It can’t be.  This is an American issue.  We must turn the page on this crazy behavior and call it out wherever it crops up.  We know we’re prone to it.  We have some nasty tendencies, that is obvious.  But we are also young, and we have time to grow up into a nation better than this. 

No more weight.

The Discomforts of Freedom

Posted on by
8

Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

I am usually better-than-average in my comfort zone with the complexities of the U.S. Constitution.  Not that I am a legal scholar, but I tend to see the difference between what is making people uncomfortable and what is actually constitutional without too much trouble, and it doesn’t raise my blood pressure most of the time.  It is true, however, that nothing about the Constitution is designed to make us comfortable.  It is designed to challenge us to be a free as we can be without violating the rights of others.

The most powerful and influential thing I ever heard about the idea of “rights” is this:  When we say that someone has a right, we have simultaneously said that someone else does not have a right.

When we say that someone has a right, we have simultaneously said that someone else does not have a right.

It’s a troubling sentence, but very important to process every time we throw around talk about “rights.” In the United States when it comes to the highest law of the land we have to focus on the Constitution and what this country is about, not on what makes us comfortable.  If I have a right to smoke cigarettes unrestricted, that means that no one else has the right to breathe clean air.  If you have the right to hit your child, that means your child do not have the right to an absence of violence against them.  One can see how this goes down a snarly road quickly, but one can also see how the Supreme Court starts slicing and dicing the nation’s most difficult cases.  Don’t tell us how you feel.  Tell us which Constitutional rights are at stake.

A few decades ago in the sleepy college town of Davidson, North Carolina, the Ku Klux Klan applied for a parade permit.  The town approved their permit, and then essentially the entire town abandoned Main Street and gathered on campus for a community picnic.  The Klan marched, alone.  I don’t think they ever came back to Davidson, at least not in a manner expecting endorsement and attention.

The construction of a mosque very close to the site of the 9/11 attacks in New York has challenged me in unexpected ways.  I want to say I’m cool with it, but I’m not, at least not from the perspective of how I feel.  But it doesn’t matter how I feel, it only matters what rights the Constitution preserves and protects.  There is a baked-in irony in the attitude that “allowing” this place of worship on “our” holy ground only celebrates a radical Muslim victory against the United States.  The greatest victory any enemy of our country could ever achieve would be to turn us into something else, to so terrorize and shake our foundation that we rationalize stepping away from what makes us unique, from what makes us a destination that people around the world risk everything to reach.  Grief over the 9/11 attacks will never disappear, but that grief cannot be enshrined as a national religion.  The Constitution prohibits that, and we should all be deeply grateful.

Freedom of religion ensures that this mosque can be built, at ground zero or anywhere else.  The President of the United States said he “would not comment on the wisdom” of the decision to build, and that is probably the best thing he can say.  It doesn’t matter how anyone else feels about it.  It is a protected right, and it should be allowed to proceed in peace.

I am also allowed to ignore it after today, and to take my picnic somewhere else.  That is my right.  And I wouldn’t trade any of these rights for anything, especially not for a society where I am never challenged and always comfortable.

Update: I made a mistake when I referred to the issue as being about a “mosque.”  Several times today I saw items that clarified this proposed construction is about a community center with a space reserved for worship.  I think this probably doesn’t change many feelings, but anything that can be done to talk about the facts is important.  This is what I get for reading CNN headlines, right?  I also saw this link posted by someone on Facebook: http://www.xtcian.com/arch/003371.php#comments  What a great reminder that headlines aren’t citizens, and New Yorkers are some of the last of us to get up in arms about diversity!  A good read for some good perspective………