Must see When They Came for Ward Churchill
Sometimes you have to use the gifts which grace has given. Sometimes you have to see with your eyes, to hear with your ears, to feel with your heart, to know with your mind. The essential lesson I carry from my Protestant upbringing is this: at any moment it is possible to open our heart and our eyes. Some call it deathbed conversion -- I call it choosing to be human.
Question #5: You seem to come against the technocratic corps. The students here, virtually every one of us, we're not training here we aren't studying here to become food service workers or janitors. So, are we also 'little Eichmanns?'
Ward Churchill: That's your choice.
Question #5: What about the men and women in the towers who were your 'little Eichmanns"? Did they all choose to be these "little Eichmann?'
Ward Churchill: That's your choice.
Question #5: And what out of us, how would we choose not to be a "little Eichmann, what would we be saying?
Ward Churchill: You're not to make a speech, you were to pose a question. You posed it; I'll answer it, OK? When you knowingly accept the collateral effects of business practice as usual, projected by the United States into the rest of the planet, and even if you don't agree with it, contribute your expertise, your technical ability, your proficiency to furthering the process of extermination of masses of children, for your own personal gain and benefit, to fit into the structure, without challenging it, you are, in the Hannah Arendt metaphysical sense of Eichmann, Eichmann.
[loud cheers and applause]
My response to MickeyZ
66. Always coming late to the party…
I believe there to be a miscommunication going on. And to the point that language choice has furthered this breach I lend support. However, I would also like to point out the bridges that exist, questioning the various demands as to who must walk and which.
An organism is more than its individual cells. Behaviour emerges that is greater than the sum of each individual action. Indeed behaviour emerges which is not conceived by any one of the constituent elements. Mickey Z has pointed to the elements, while Ward Churchill insists that actions of the whole must have moral relevance. In so far as the any individual becomes aware of the aggregate consequence of individual action that individual actor bears moral responsibility. Still further, the greater the freedom of action, the heavier the burden. It’s the Spiderman principle, and it’s no great mystery: If I choose to wear sweatshop shoes so that I can winter in the Alps, I bear more responsibility than the store clerk who shoes his children at WalMart.
I hope that some are interested to understand how the Churchill-chosen words have been heard by me. I was touched by the force and power of the statements. So many of us who watch the daily devastation raining upon children weep quietly. To hear a leader speak out loudly in support of the children and of the parents and of the families and of the communities and of the friends of these children—this touched me, because it is not the daily bread our culture feeds us. I perceive great latitude in society for orthodox condemnation; I see the words of Ward Churchill as no more strident.
“We have the right to life.” Even Eichmann has the right to life. And Churchill demands that the lives of Iraqi children carry the same meaning as the lives of NYC working professionals.
The fact is clear to me: Dismissing the words of Ward Churchill cannot assuage the choices we make regarding how we spend our brief time on this planet. What brand of SUV would Jesus of Nazareth purchase with his corporate windfalls? The answer, like the facts, is clear to those who see.
Posted by mickleby on from San Francisco 07/14 at 01:28 PM
I find myself comparing the costs that shall have been paid by citizens of the United States of America to the costs to those who by chance were born into Iraq. That burned soldier may not look forward to the health care of Paris Hilton, but what can his Iraqi counterpart look forward to? Yes, a lot of wealth will have been transfered from future Americans to the coffers of military contractors. How does this amount compare to the loss of Iraqi national oil wealth? It pales, per capita, no doubt.
Still there's another cost that comes to mind. Those Iraqis have suffered under the sword of Hussein and they have suffered the paint from a broad brush in the minds of many. Too many I meet in the U.S. are eager to paint the world in these simple colors. All the while I hear lamentations from fellow Americans about the loss of international prestige and respect we suffer because of George W. Bush's Middle East missteps. Is this any less delusional? We citizens of the United States have imagined ourselves to be masters of our own fate, and we have imagined the children of Arabia and Islam and Palestine and Judea to be masters as well. I find this to be of the most dangerous manner of hubris. We suffer this delusion to justify our indifference and our greed, and we hardly notice when this delusion serves as conduit -- transforming fears of an indifferent god into reckless war spilling alien blood.
Yes, I am saying it: If The War serves to awaken the U.S. citizenry from slumber in time to preserve Constitutional rule of law it shall have been a bargain well made. I am not saying this because I love America. I am saying this because I love freedom and open society. I am saying this because I believe the children of Iraq and of Mexico have as much right to the pursuit of happiness as do I.
The people of the United States of America created the most powerful economy in history. Then we sold it for baubles and beads. Is it too late to void the sale? What cost freedom? Are we yet rich enough in spirit to bargain for the blood of our own children, or for the blood of children not our own?