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Friends, In the flurry of correspondence arising from the anxiety of recent days a series of positions have arisen. Some of these positions are quite orthodox, i.e., their proponents are quite certain that they knew the right doctrine. Others are moderately conservative, i.e., their proponents want to hark back to the status quo ante. Others, though, perhaps the smallest number are liberal, i.e., their proponents want the least possible intervention but will intervene as much as necessary. Sadly, the largest number of positions that have come to me by e-mail are of an orthodox persuasion, typically religiously orthodox, including Christian, Muslim, Jewish and Marxist. What they all have in common -- the quite considerable differences between these cultural perspectives is the certainty that God is on their side and that their doctrine is the right one. A very few are searching for a progressive position without claiming to have yet found it. What might a progressive position look like. I am not presently possessed of a complete text of such a position. I am, however, quite sure that the questions I propose below will take us closer to finding such a position that sitting on a scripture in hopes that it might hatch. A progressive position can not be content merely to lament the catastrophic attacks of September 11. But it also cannot be so disingenuous as to suggest that these are the worst or the only such events in human history. A progressive position must be prepared to relieve the causes of human suffering. It must understand that suffering provokes people both to despair and to desparate actions. It does not, however, allow the suffering and the consequent desperation are justifications for violence. A progressive position furthers an international rule of law. This means that the refusal to allow previous violence to justify more violence applies to all states, to all religious movements and to the plethora of lobbyists who seek to convince legislators and bureaucrats of their positions. The rule of law means that there is the same law for the rich and for the poor. It also means that there is sufficient redistributive justice that the poor have significant access to the law. A progressive position can not entertain the kinds of prevarications in which persons in high office with pretensions of leadership claim greater glory for their side and declare that their opponents are destitute of the knowledge of God. If there be a heresy it is the insistence that one's opponent is more ignorant, more cowardly, less noble or less worthy of life than one's self. There may well be evil doers. There may not be entire peoples who are far more evil than other whole peoples. Here are a list of questions which I hope many will think about and some might even reflect upon in a response to this note. I wrote these questions initially in response to a friend who said that a commentatory who questioned the glory of "America's New War" did not have a good grasp of the situation. She may, of course, have been right. It is likely that very few of us have a grasp of the situation that is not flawed. My hope is that this note may further a dialogue in which each of us is enabled to work toward a position that is less flawed, less orthodox, more healing and more susceptible to a non-imperial progress. Here are my questions: What are your goals: 1. To wreak vengeance? 2. To seek justice for some? 3. To seek justice for all including those who have suffered in New York and Washington and those who have suffered similarly elsewhere? 4. To reduce the level of human suffering in the United States? 5. To reduce the level of human suffering in the Americas? 6. To reduce the level of human suffering in the world as a whole? 7. What steps are needed to accomplish or at least to work toward each of these goals? 8. Are the steps for some goals in apparent conflict with the steps for other goals? 9. Are these irreconcilable? 10. Will legislation suspending civil rights increase the level of security against further attacks? 11. Has any news medium with which you have contact offered a serious digest of the newly proposed anti-terrorist legislation either in the U.S. or in Canada? 12. How will the re-classificiaton of civil disobedience as terrorism under newly proposed legislation affect free speech where you live? 13. How does the use of the term "terrorism" and related terms in the current parlance related to the historic uses of these terms? 14. Has the term "terrorism" more commonly referred to insurrectionists or to the conduct and attitude of state agencies? Thanks very much, Michael Posluns. -- If we knew where knowledge goes when it evaporates, perhaps we might learn to recover what we have lost and to reconstitute it as distilled wisdom. "How long will you judge unjustly, and show partiality toward the wicked? Do justice to the poor and fatherless, deal righteously with the afflicted and destitute. Rescue the poor and needy; save them from the hand of the wicked." (A Psalm of Asaph, The Psalm for the Third Day.) How can we be sure that the unexamined life is not worth living? Michael W. Posluns, The Still Waters Group, First Nations Relations & Public Policy Daytime: 416 995-8613 Evening: 416 656-8613 Fax: 416 656-2715 36 Lauder Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, M6H 3E3
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