Who ain't a Salve? or Obamba's Beaten Army of Lovers

[alice wellintown]

I make this statement mindful of what Martin Luther King said in this
same ceremony years ago - "Violence never brings permanent peace. It
solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated
ones." As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr.
King's life's work, I am living testimony to the moral force of
non-violence. I know there is nothing weak -nothing passive - nothing
naïve - in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King.

But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot
be guided by their examples alone. I face the world as it is, and
cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For
make no mistake: evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement
could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince al
Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force is sometimes
necessary is not a call to cynicism - it is a recognition of history;
the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.

In light of the Cultural Revolution's horrors, Nixon's meeting with
Mao appeared inexcusable - and yet it surely helped set China on a
path where millions of its citizens have been lifted from poverty, and
connected to open societies. Pope John Paul's engagement with Poland
created space not just for the Catholic Church, but for labor leaders
like Lech Walesa. Ronald Reagan's efforts on arms control and embrace
of perestroika not only improved relations with the Soviet Union, but
empowered dissidents throughout Eastern Europe. There is no simple
formula here. But we must try as best we can to balance isolation and
engagement; pressure and incentives, so that human rights and dignity
are advanced over time.

After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the
hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period
continue, to rule, is not because they are most likely to be in the
right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because
they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the
majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as
men understand it. Can there not be a government in which majorities
do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience? — in which
majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency
is applicable? Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least
degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a
conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects
afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so
much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to
assume is to do at any time what I think right. It is truly enough
said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of
conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience. Law never made
men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the
well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice. A common and
natural result of an undue respect for law is, that you may see a file
of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys,(5)
and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars,
against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences,
which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation
of the heart. They have no doubt that it is a damnable business in
which they are concerned; they are all peaceably inclined. Now, what
are they? Men at all? or small movable forts and magazines, at the
service of some unscrupulous man in power? Visit the Navy Yard, and
behold a marine, such a man as an American government can make, or
such as it can make a man with its black arts — a mere shadow and
reminiscence of humanity, a man laid out alive and standing, and
already, as one may say, buried under arms with funeral
accompaniments, though it may be

"Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
 As his corse to the rampart we hurried;
 Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
 O'er the grave where our hero we buried."
   The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as
machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the
militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus,(7) etc. In most cases
there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral
sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and
stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the
purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a
lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and
dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens.
Others, as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and
office-holders, serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they
rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the
devil, without intending it, as God. A very few, as heroes, patriots,
martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the state with
their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most
part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it. A wise man will
only be useful as a man, and will not submit to be "clay," and "stop a
hole to keep the wind away,"(8) but leave that office to his dust at
least: —
"I am too high-born to be propertied,
 To be a secondary at control,
 Or useful serving-man and instrument
 To any sovereign state throughout the world."
   He who gives himself entirely to his fellow-men appears to them
useless and selfish; but he who gives himself partially to them is
pronounced a benefactor and philanthropist.
    How does it become a man to behave toward this American government
to-day? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with
it. I cannot for an instant recognize that political organization as
my government which is the slave's government also.

What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a
broom and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to,
weighed, I mean, in the scales of the New Testament? Do you think the
archangel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly
and respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who
ain't a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old sea-captains
may order me about- however they may thump and punch me about, I have
the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else
is one way or other served in much the same way- either in a physical
or metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is
passed round, and all hands should rub each other's shoulder-blades,
and be content.



Frederick Douglass by Robert Hayden
When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful
and terrible thing, needful to man as air,
usable as earth; when it belongs at last to all,
when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole,
reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more
than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians:
this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro
beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world
where none is lonely, none hunted, alien,
this man, superb in love and logic, this man
shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues' rhetoric,
not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone,
but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives
fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing.