Faithful In Adversity

Saturday, January 28, 2006

Keeping my word to Mr. Munro

Loyalty needs to sort its priorities. I once met a man serving in the
U.S. Armed Forces, who said that he would consider becoming a
policeman after he got out of the military...IF NOT FOR the fact
that this might force him "to go against The Nation." By "The Nation,"
he did NOT mean the nation he had sworn an oath to defend; he
meant his own racial group, which seemed to be ALL that mattered
to him. He unabashedly BOASTED of knowing members of a major
criminal gang based entirely within his own racial group; as long as
they were his race, it didn't seem to bother him a bit that they were
predatory criminals. I felt like asking why he didn't feel embarrassed
to be accepting a salary from the United States government when
was so obviously prepared to place the interests of his one racial
group ABOVE the well-being of the United States. But of course,
it I had raise this question, I would have been the one to be branded
as a "racist."

If I can get some participation here, I'd like to see some postings
upon the matter of what decides which loyalty comes first.

1 Comments:

At 4:46 PM, Blogger Joseph Ravitts said...

There was a time when the British
resented the imperialism of Spain.
They resented it so much that they
had no room for sympathy for anyone
whom they suspected of being friendly to Spain. This is one
reason why they were so harsh to
the Irish. Later, when the Irish
came to America, they brought their
own resentment along...and often
had no compassion for anyone else's
grievances. Thus, Irishmen in the
North had no sympathy toward black
men freed from slavery, and tried
to force them out of the job
market. In the 20th century it was
black people's own turn to be
self-absorbed in their grievances:
many of them resented Vietnamese
refugees coming to America and
"taking" social services which
blacks regarded as their special
property. Whenever mere ethnic
heritage is made the supreme no-
matter-what loyalty, it always
results in unfair attitudes, and
often in violence, to those who
don't happen to "belong."

The United States has tried to
inspire loyalty to an IDEA--an
idea which can belong to all.

 

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