In our outrage over a stolen election, let's not lose our humanity

 

Let me begin by acknowledging the truth that's as plain as the nose on anyone's face:  Joe Biden did not win this election.  He - or, rather, his handlers - stole it by fraudulent means.  He will not be a legitimate President of the United States.  Instead, he will be a terminally corrupt representative of a terminally corrupt progressive left-wing ideology, and of the political party representing that ideology in this country.

Biden and his party are likely to do so much damage to the United States during the next four years that we may never recover from it.  Tax-and-spend, no-taxes-but-spend-anyway, bail out the profligate, spendthrift Democratic-Party-controlled states, admit millions of illegal aliens who can be groomed into Democratic-Party-supporting citizens and voters, pack the Supreme Court to render toothless any challenge to their policies, defund many of the core constitutional priorities of our government . . . the list is almost endless.  We're in for all of it, and I dread the prospect.

Nevertheless, a large part of the American people know what's happened, and they're determined to do something about it.  I won't be surprised to see violence break out very shortly, and probably grow as the clash of ideologies becomes a war over our nation's soul.  My wife wrote earlier about what we saw and heard on Saturday morning.  That's far from an isolated incident, and not just here in Texas, but in many other states as well.  We've heard from friends who are preparing to abandon everything they've worked for in Democratic-Party-controlled states, and flee to other states where the mob (and corrupt, perennially greedy politicians) won't try to rob them blind and ride roughshod over their civil rights.  It's now a national issue, and getting larger by the day.

I had a conversation yesterday with a friend, a combat veteran of considerable experience.  He and others are said to be preparing to start patrolling the southern border together, in the hope of turning back illegal aliens that would otherwise be welcomed with open arms by the future Biden administration.  They appear to be determined to interdict drug smugglers, human traffickers, and other human trash that seeks to use the border region as a highway to the heart of America.

I asked him how he and his friends proposed to stop the human wave that's already piling up along the border.  After all, simply telling them to go back won't do much.  Even if they do so when challenged, they'll be back.

His answer was short, simple, and brutal.  "We plan to shoot the ****ers."

I blinked.  "But they've done nothing to harm you, or offer any threat to you.  How can you just shoot them?"

"They're invading my country, and bringing drugs and crime with them.  That makes them the enemy.  Doesn't matter who they are - they're illegals.  They got nothing coming."

"Are you telling me you'd line up your sights on a six-year-old girl, crossing the border with her mother, and shoot her because of the sins of other illegals?"

He shrugged coldly.  "They're an invading army.  Doesn't matter if they're male or female, old or young, whatever.  They're committing a crime just by coming across the border illegally, and if enough of them get here, they're going to destroy our country.  That makes them criminals, and we're going to treat them that way.  They deserve all they're going to get."

Nothing I could say could change his mind.  He's focused on a problem, and sees only one way to eliminate it - and to hell with ethical and moral considerations.  He was genuinely shocked when I told him that the moment he acted on what he'd said to me, he'd be just as much a murderer as any other killer.  He accused me of having "gone soft", of taking my faith so far that I wouldn't just turn the other cheek, I'd let our enemies cut it off (despite my extensive track record, which he knows, of dealing with unlawful, unjustified aggression in a rather less passive way).  I think our friendship, which has lasted through many years, is probably at an end.

This is a classic example of the moral dilemma that violence always brings with it.  I wrote about it after the Bataclan massacre in 2015, and mentioned it again the other day in another context.

To me, the worst [aspect of violent conflict] is what it does to the human psyche.  You become dehumanized.  Your enemies are no longer people - they're objects, things, targets.  You aren't shooting at John, whose mother is ill, and who's missing his girlfriend terribly, and who wants to marry her as soon as he can get home to do so.  You're shooting at that enemy over there, the one who'll surely 'do unto you' unless you 'do unto him' first.  He's not a human being.  He's a 'gook'.  He's 'the enemy'.  He's a thing rather than a person.  It's easier to shoot a thing than it is a person ... You no longer think of civilians as such.  They're in enemy territory, or known to be sympathetic to the enemy:  therefore, they're 'things', suspects, never to be trusted, never to be treated objectively or with anything other than the forced, mandatory legal definition of 'decency' imposed by your superiors . . . and even that becomes flexible when those superiors aren't around to monitor what you're doing.

My erstwhile friend has become the living embodiment of this dilemma.  When I asked him whether he'd "line up your sights on a six-year-old girl, crossing the border with her mother, and shoot her because of the sins of other illegals", his answer was that he would.  That child was no longer a human child to him, but a symbol of the invasion of his country.  She'd been dehumanized in his mind.  It horrified me that he could calmly admit that, and not turn a hair.  To him, killing her would be no more than "collateral damage" in the effort to save his country.

I'm seeing the same callousness in talk about shooting this, or that, or the other politician, or activist, or members of a given organization.  If someone has shown themselves to be an enemy of our Republic, and a traitor to our constitution, then they should undoubtedly pay a price for that;  but if we set ourselves up as judge, and jury, and executioner, we give others license to do exactly the same to us.  That's what the Golden Rule is all about.  I don't see how any Christian, at least, can persuade themselves that it's moral to do that.

I'm entirely in agreement that there needs to be resistance to the progressive coup d'état that electoral fraud during the November 2020 elections has brought about.  I have no objection to the guilty parties being brought to justice.  However, let's make sure that it's the guilty who suffer punishment.  As they have sown, so let them reap.  Let their criminal and morally evil actions be their judge - not our opinion of their politics.  Otherwise, we make ourselves as much an enemy of our constitution and laws - not to mention our moral and ethical foundation - as they are.

• If someone tries to pass, or votes for, or tries to enforce, laws, rules and regulations that violate our constitution;
• If someone is complicit in electoral fraud, resulting in the theft of political office(s);
• If someone rides roughshod over the rights of others, behaving like a tinpot dictator instead of a constitutionally limited official;
• Then "let them be anathema", as the old term puts it.  Let them be judged according to their actions - but not their politics.

Actions speak louder than words.  In a court of law (proper, objective law, that is) one is not convicted of a crime merely by one's thoughts or words.  One is convicted because one has done something wrong.  To apply any lesser standard is to arrogate to ourselves the right to judge other's thoughts or words as criminal - precisely what they're trying to do to us.  Two wrongs don't make one right.

Let us never forget the warning delivered by Friedrich Nietzsche more than a century ago.

Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. Und wenn du lange in einen Abgrund blickst, blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein.

Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster.  And when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

His warning came horrifyingly true for Nazi Germany and its adherents.  It's been true for almost every extremist regime, group and individual in history.  I speak from bitter personal experience when I assure you that his warning remains prescient for us today.

Peter