…the true battleground of our time is made plain. Consider the following snatch of dialogue from a recent, brilliant movie:
“Do you believe I’m evil, James?”
“Evil isn’t a clinical diagnosis….good and evil are societal constructs, effectively subjective value statements.”
“I think I love you.”
Ponder that for a moment. Ponder whether you believe it. Because your answer will determine on which side you stand in the greatest war ever fought, and ever to be fought. Add in the following admittedly fictional statement from a committed Communist:
“Your certainty is impressive,” Ryan said. “It allows you to justify your faith in mass murder.”
“It’s not murder,” she said, “when the violence is justified by the revolution. The bourgeois regime being attacked is criminal and inhuman and all who are obedient to it are complicit in its interminable violence. In acts of revolutionary violence against the enemy anyone complicit with the enemy who is killed is guilty of the crime of the enemy. It is not murder.”
“So riding a subway train to work,” Ryan said, “is a criminal act punishable by death?”
“When seen in its true historical context, it certainly is,” she said confidently.
“Everyone on the subway is equally guilty,” Ryan suggested.
“No, not if you go person by person, a maid or janitor is not carrying the same level of guilt as a stockbroker or corporate executive, but revolutionary violence sweeps with an inclusive broom. The statement it makes is bold and absolute and is a warning to all….”
“And what do you believe in, soldier boy? Gawd?”
“In the individual and his liberty,” Ryan said, rising to the bait.”
“Oh dear, an American. You people are so charming, so quaint,” she said, “always the perpetual football players running onto the field to the roar of the crowd and the bouncing breasts of the cheerleaders.”
“You’re an American, aren’t you, Ms. Garvin?” he asked.
“Ah, no,” she said. “I stopped thinking of myself as that, as an American when I was a teenager. That’s what we call ‘the normal maturation process’ these days, soldier boy. Sorry you missed it.”
“So you’re not an American,” Ryan said. “What are you?”
“I’m a citizen of the world,” she said.
“That’s a big concept,” Ryan said.
“It’s basic,” she said. “You must have missed it while you were attending your ROTC meetings.”
“I guess I did,” Ryan said. “That would explain why I’m still just an American with a silly belief in freedom.”
Garvin laughed.
“Freedom? You think this America is free? You’ve got ninety percent of the people glued to their couches gazing like zombies into their televisions and eating non-stop. And then they jump off their couches for five minutes of history when a couple of tall buildings are knocked down in New York. That’s the America I see. That’s the America the revolution sees. This freedom thing you believe in, soldier boy, is a fairy tale, just like Gawd. History is unfolding right before your eyes and you’re running in the opposite direction after the fairies of freedom and the goblins of terrorism. You should run in the direction of revolutionary violence, all of you should, get out in front of it, get off this America thing, because it is dead, a thing of the past. America no longer exists. You just haven’t realized it. None of you have….
“What you people refuse to understand,” Garvin said, jumping into the silence that had fallen over the room, “is that this freedom of yours is no more than pitiful self-indulgence at the expense of others. What the revolution does is take the anger and frustration of those who hunger for justice in the world and shape that into purposeful violence. You try to deny that by calling it ‘senseless violence’ and “mass murder,’ but I’m looking at your faces now and I can see those old defenses and the lies that support them draining out of you. You all look like children who have just been told that there is no Santa Claus, and you had really known that all along. You just needed an adult to make it official for you. Well, here I am, kids, giving it to you straight, what you already knew.”[From Martin McPhillips’s extraordinary thriller Corpse In Armor.]
Apologies…no, strike that: if the above disturbs your sleep, I’ve done what I set out to do. Have a nice evening.
