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Friday, 21 September 2001
Extremism and Appropriate Responses ::
The enemy is extremism. And it has many faces. Obviously, the terrorists who committed this atrocity are extremists.
As are Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, who say we have brought this on ourselves by giving our nation over to the abortionists, homosexuals and civil libertarians.
As are the rabid hawks you sometimes hear on talk radio, advocating bombing the hell out of whatever country we hold responsible.
As are the individuals who tossed a Molotov cocktail into the home of supposed Arab AMERICANS (here in San Mateo, CA, family turns out not to be of Middle Eastern descent, device hit a 3-year-old in the head). And the person who murdered a Sikh (wears turban, not Moslem) in Arizona. These people are willing to descend to the level of the enemy, as individuals, and would apparently have no problem seeing our nation do so.
Peace groups (according an article in yesterday’s San Jose Mercury) are are quite conflicted about how to respond. It doesn’t sound like many would advocate doing nothing. I would say that to fail to respond to this act of barbarism would be extremist pacifism.
We’ve been given a big wakeup call. Life is short and precious. Some things we thought were important don’t seem so important any more. And some things that we’ve been reminded are important, we realize we may have sometimes been taking for granted. If there’s a silver lining in the cloud, it’s that an encounter with the worst in human nature brings out the best in us. I’m sure we’ve all seen many moving examples of this in the news, the passengers who probably foiled a fourth crash into a building, the firefighters who lost their lives, the tireless rescue workers, the outpouring of generosity and compassion not only here but worldwide.
As individuals and a nation, my hope is that we all respond *appropriately*, which means calmly and courageously rooting out the perpetrators and their supporters, which will require sometimes violent means. Responding appropriately to a situation is the opposite of the extremist, who is more utterly convinced of his own correctness than in touch with reality or acting out of any genuine concern for the welfare of others.
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