St. Croix Review - Calling Things by Proper American Names

Calling Things by Proper American Names

Thomas Martin

Thomas Martin teaches at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Nebraska at Kearney.

      The recent bombing of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon by terrorists has awakened a national pride that has not been seen since WW II. We Americans have decorated this nation with our flag from roof tops to a baseball field where 5,000 people dressed in red, white, and blue stood to form an American flag; from baseball uniforms to the stock exchange, from our porches and yards to our schools and playgrounds. Until just a few weeks ago it was illegal to pray before a high school football game in this country. Patriotism was mouthed as an habitual act, but now "God Bless America" is sung at the opening of the stock exchange, at baseball and football games, on television shows, and by congressmen before the House of Representatives, without so much as a thought about offending someone who may not believe in God.
      "America under Attack" is the lead story of the journalists covering the greatest single loss of American life in this nation since the Civil War. President Bush called the terrorist actions "evil," and no one in the media has questioned his choice of words as some did when President Reagan called the Soviet Union an Evil Empire.
      Colin Powell spoke of this being an attack on the civilized world by an uncivilized barbaric brood, and no one screamed at his "lack of sensitivity" or "lack of appreciation of other cultures." And rightly so, for a people who cultivate themselves in hatred defile all that is sacred. Evil IS barbaric.
      We have moved from the hypothetical to the actual, from lounging in our freedoms to the defense of those very freedoms themselves. We have been shocked back to our nation's creation and brought down to its Bill of Rights, the very grounds for our existence as Americans. Now we have returned to the moral language of our ancestors. We are calling things by their proper American names.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

This is what We the People believe; this is our creed.
      The truth that we are created by God and granted the liberty to pursue the happiness He has bestowed upon us was destroyed for thousands of Americans in the recent bombings by terrorists. There is a vast difference between a soldier throwing himself on a hand grenade as a sacrifice for his fellow countrymen and a terrorist turning himself into a bomb to be used against innocent people. The acts of the latter make him horribly unequal.
      The land that we love has been bombed, the ideals we hold sacred have been blasted by anarchists, who, so far, do not belong to any nation or any religion.
      Recently a freethinking college professor remarked that suicide was the same as martyrdom. This only magnifies the fallacy of not calling acts by their proper terms.
      Patriots do not go to war because they want to kill other men or themselves; they go to war because they are willing to die for what they love. They may kill others dying for what they love, but those others are called soldiers. There is a difference between a martyr sacrificing his life to save what he loves and a terrorist killing himself along with innocent civilians. The one man dies for what is behind him: his family, friends and community; the other, in killing himself, kills a whole world ahead of him. There is no man, woman, child, home, community, or nation that deserves a terrorist's death.
      This is why the terrorists remain faceless, and why no group is willing to stand up in the world to admit it is behind the slaughter of innocents. A man who kills a man, kills a man. A man who kills himself, kills all men. Destroys the force of humanity itself.

A martyr is a man who cares so much for something outside him, that he forgets his own personal life. A suicide is a man who cares so little for anything outside him, that he wants to see the last of everything. One wants something to begin; the other wants everything to end. In other words, the martyr is noble, exactly because he confesses this ultimate link with life; he sets his heart outside himself: he dies that something may live. The suicide is ignoble because he has not this link with being: he is a mere destroyer; spiritually, he destroys the universe.

      The terrorists who went up in the flames at the World Trade Center brought it tumbling down on the New York City police and firefighters who were rushing into the burning buildings to save lives. Both groups of men died: the terrorists by denying the sacredness of life with a ball of fire; the police and firefighters by affirming the right to life by dying for others in balls of fire. The former group of men represent the descent of man to the barbarians; the latter group of men represent the ascent of man to the angels.
      We will do well to remember that to "sacrifice" is the Latin for making a thing holy. War, whatever else it may be, is never holy. No God countenances the slaughter of the innocents. Only evil men do that. And some are so evil they invoke God's name to countenance their wickedness. Which leaves them doubly damned, damned not only by their acts, but also their thoughts.
      In all of this, the terrorists who wish to attack America would to well to remember, we Americans do not love America because she is great. America is great because we love her.