Where Are Our Heroes Today?

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Where Are Our Heroes Today?

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Tue Jun 13th 2006, 09:23 AM

 

* | Ernest Partridge |*

 

/ " There is a need to create ideals even when you can't see any route by

which to achieve them, because if there are no ideals then there can be

no hope and then one would be completely in the dark, in a hopeless

blind alley. " -- Andrei Sakharov

 

" Peace, progress, human rights. These three goals are indissolubly

linked. It is impossible to achieve one of them if the others are

ignored. " -- Andrei Sakharov, Nobel Prize Speech, 1975/

 

 

It is impossible to fully appreciate the enormity of the crimes of the

Bush Administration. Among them: That regime has initiated a war

against

an unthreatening nation, has caused the death tens of thousands of

innocent civilians, has abrogated numerous treaties including the

Geneva

conventions that stipulate the humane treatment of prisoners of war,

has

tortured and murdered numerous prisoners, has held American citizens

indefinitely, without charge, trial, and access to counsel in violation

of several articles of the Bill of Rights, has " lost " to graft and

corruption several billion dollars of public money, has looted the

treasury and passed the public debt on to future generations, has taken

and retained power through election fraud, and has in effect proclaimed

the President above the law.

 

Incomprehensible! And so we are a nation in denial.

 

Many admirable individuals, too numerous to mention, have spoken up in

protest against the Bushevik regime. Among them, Cindy Sheehan, Ray

McGovern, Joe Wilson, Jack Murtha, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the seven

retired generals who demanded the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld. Add

to

these the progressive bloggers in that last vestige of our " free

press, "

the internet. Worthy individuals all. But none of these have put

themselves in grave peril. They are, at this moment at least, still

free

to dissent and then be ignored by the mainstream media. They are safe.

But so too, apparently, is the target of their protests, the Bush

regime.

 

The opposition to Bushism is weak, inchoate, disorganized and

unfocused.

And it apparently is without a political party to advocate its message

since, it seems, the " official " Democratic Party, with a few honorable

exceptions within, is content to serve as a junior partner in what has

effectively become a one-party state.

 

So where, at this perilous moment in the history of the United States,

are our heroes – men and women of moral vision, extraordinary courage

and unyielding integrity, who will put their careers, their freedom and

even their very lives on the line in order to put a halt to descent of

the United States into despotism? Where is our Mohandas Gandhi, our

Nelson Mandela, our Martin Luther King, Jr., our Andrei Sakharov?

Although many others could be mentioned, I have selected these four

moral giants of the past century as exemplars of the sort of moral

integrity, courage, and tactical intelligence that are so desperately

needed at this darkening moment in our history.

 

Great crises in history have a way of producing great moral leaders,

albeit not often enough. It is impossible to determine what the fate of

India, South Africa, the American South and the Soviet Union might have

been were it not for the inspired and inspiring leadership of these

great men, but in each case the outcome would almost certainly have

been

much the worse for the people and for the cause of freedom. Will we,

the

American people, at this moment of our acute need for heroic

leadership,

be so fortunate as to find extraordinary men and women equal to the

challenges of the time?

 

This question was brought vividly to my mind this past week as I

watched

the 1984 TV movie, " Sakharov, " with Jason Robards in the title role,

and

Glenda Jackson as his wife, Elena Bonner. It is a superb portrayal of

Sakharov and Bonner and meticulously accurate as to the events and even

the published words of Sakharov. Many of those words in the screenplay

are by Sakharov himself, taken, verbatim, from the out-of-print book,

Sakharov Speaks, edited by Harrison Salisbury and published in 1974.

The

scene depicting Sakharov's encounter with the state prosecutor is drawn

from Sakharov's own written recollection.

 

But that splendid movie presents two acts of a three-act drama, as it

closes with Sakharov and Bonner exiled to the industrial city of Gorky,

where they resided, incommunicado, when the movie was released in 1984.

The final act was both a triumph and a tragedy, as Sakharov was

released

from exile in 1986 by Mikhail Gorbachev and returned in triumph to

Moscow. Soon thereafter he was elected to the Council of Deputies and

became a leader of the liberal opposition. In December, 1989, shortly

after completing a draft constitution for a free and democratic Russia,

Sakharov died at age 68. At his funeral, his widow, Elena Bonner said

to

Gorbachev: " I pity you, for you have lost an honest critic. "

 

Russian sociologist and dissident, Tatyana Zaslavskaya, said this of

her

fallen colleague:

 

 

Sakharov was the only one of us who made no compromises.... For us, he

was a figure of the inner spirit. Just the bare facts of his life, the

way he suffered for all of us, gave him an authority that no one else

had. Without him, we could not begin to rebuild our society.

 

And in an interview on National Public Radio in November, 2001,

Vladimir

Putin responded to a caller's question with this tribute:

 

 

At certain periods of time in the life of any nation, there will be

people who turn on the light, if you will. They show a road for the

nation to follow. Andrei Sakharov was one of those people: a visionary,

someone who was able not only to see the future, but to articulate his

thoughts, and to do so without fear.

 

What does Sakharov's courageous resistance to Soviet despotism have to

do with us? After all, we're Americans! We live in a free country!

Don't

be too sure of that. It is true that the USA of 2006 is not the Soviet

Union in the seventies. But who can doubt that we are traveling down

the

same road? Watch the movie, " Sakharov, " and you should be shocked at

the

parallels between what the Soviet dissidents were dealing with and what

we are facing today.

 

For example: In one scene, Bonner signals for silence and points to

light fixture, indicating the probably placement of a KGB microphone. I

had exactly the same experience in 1991, at the apartment of a Russian

friend in Moscow. Given the sophisticated technology of today and the

Bushevik obsession with secrecy and surveillance, how can we expect to

be secure in our private conversations? Even as late as the

mid-nineties, after the fall of the Soviet regime, I was advised by my

Russian friends always to assume that my mail to Russia, both e-mail

and

postal, would be read by government agents. Of course, at the time I

had

no such concerns about my domestic mail back home. No longer. Like my

friends in Moscow and St. Petersburg, I must now expect that my mail

might be read and that my phones might be tapped.

 

Sakharov's writings were smuggled out and published abroad but were not

published in the Soviet Union. Nonetheless, the Soviet government and

media launched a relentless campaign of insult and denunciation against

the Sakharovs. Not all that different from the attacks against Gore

( " invented the internet " ) and Kerry ( " Swift Boat Veterans for Truth " ).

In fact, as Jamison Foser clearly indicated and documented

<http://mediamatters.org/items/200606030001> in Media Matters last

week,

any Democrat who achieves prominence can expect to be insulted and

attacked in the mainstream media.

 

One of the most chilling practices of the Brezhnev/Andropov regimes was

the incarceration of political dissenter in psychiatric institutions.

In

the movie, two of Sakharov's associates " play-acted " an interrogation

of

a dissident by a KGB psychiatrist:

 

 

" Patient: " Why me? I followed the Constitution to the letter!

 

" Interogator: " But what normal person takes Soviet law seriously? You

are living in an unreal world of your own invention. You must be

insane!

Lock him up.

 

P. I'm not insane. Ever since I made my first legal protest, you've

hounded me.

 

I. Who has?

 

P. The KGB. I've been followed. I've been photographed.

 

I. ... Obviously paranoid. For his own good, lock him up.

 

P. All because I don't agree with the state?

 

I. Exactly! You are in conflict with society.

 

P. Some of our greatest socialist leaders were in conflict with

society.

Lenin himself...

 

I. You compare yourself to Lenin? Delusions of grandeur. Obviously

insane. Lock him up.

 

Could never happen here, you say? Not yet. But consider the

" journalistic " response

<http://mediamatters.org/items/printable/200405280001> to Al Gore's

speech to MoveOn on, May 26, 2004.

 

 

Charles Krauthammer (on FOX News): " It looks as if Al Gore has gone of

his lithium again. "

 

Dennis Miller: " I think he's lost his mind. "

 

Mark R. Levin on FOX: " Half the country thinks he's a mental patient. "

 

John Podhoretz in the New York Post: " It is now clear that Al Gore is

insane. "

 

James Taranto in the Wall Street Journal: " Gore suffers from

posttraumatic stress disorder. "

 

Sean Hannity: " He's really nuts. "

 

When might some right-wing colleague of psychiatrist Charles

Krauthammer

take the next step and sign the order committing Al Gore to a

psychiatric hospital? Impossible? How many of the Bushevik horrors

listed above seemed possible when Bush took his oath of office in

January 2001, and swore to " preserve, protect and defend the

Constitution of the United States " – a Constitution that stipulates

that

the President " shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed " ?

 

When, in earlier essays, I wrote of a need for a moral hero as a leader

of the opposition to Bushism, I was scolded by some readers for my

apparent desire to replace one authority figure with another. Not so.

The hero-leaders of whom I speak did not seize control of a movement,

the movement was drawn to and chose the leader. Without the moral

qualities that these men brought to the struggle, their emerging

leadership would not have happen. When the leader loses sight of the

commanding objectives of the movement, that leader is likely to be

replaced.

 

Even so, my respondents issue a valid caveat. For many reformers in

history have succumbed to the corruption of power. Napoleon, who began

his career as an anti-royalist reformer, later proclaimed himself

emperor. Robert Penn Warren's great novel,/ All the King's Men/, in

effect a fictional biography of Louisiana's Huey Long, depicts the

rise,

corruption and fall of a populist reformer. As another great leader,

Thomas Jefferson, warned: " eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. "

 

So who will lead the resistance that will put a stop to this

dictatorial

madness? Who will be our Sakharov? He may be a Republican – perhaps

better a Republican. Will some GOP senator stand up in the Senate and

publicly denounce his President and leave his party or even the Senate?

Will another Republican, who has access to proof-positive evidence that

the past three elections were stolen, disclose and publicize the

damning

evidence? Will some general on active duty refuse an order to bomb

Iran?

Is there another Dan Ellsberg somewhere within the bowels of this

administration willing to face prison as he publishes the " state

secrets " that just might bring down this illegal regime?

 

What act of civil disobedience will at last ignite the opposition to

Bush's incipient despotism? What will be the new realization of

Gandhi's

general strike and salt march? Or of the Montgomery Bus Boycott,

provoked by Rosa Parks' defiance, which " selected " Martin Luther King,

Jr. as the leader of non-violent resistance? We do not yet know. But if

that defiant act is to come and is to be successful, it will be

ingenious and dramatic, and it will, as Gandhi prescribed, provoke a

response from the regime followed by massive non-violent defiance.

(More

about Gandhi's resistance in a subsequent essay). Simple courage, while

necessary, will not suffice. Intelligence and discipline will also be

essential to ultimate success. This much we have learned from history.

 

I daresay that if someone with the courage and moral authority, not to

mention tactical shrewdness, of a Gandhi, Mandela, M. L. King or

Sakharov, stands up and calls the citizen-troops to action, we may all

be amazed at how many will follow.

 

But we must not wait for that leader to appear, for, if we are

fortunate, that leader will emerge as did Gandhi, Mandela, King and

Sakharov, out of the ongoing struggle and defiance of the people. That

leadership must be preceded by innumerable individual acts of protest

and resistance.

 

The Busheviks, through their greed, their corruption, their disregard

of

the law and the Constitution, their cruelty, and their war crimes, have

disgraced us all in the eyes of the peoples of the world. Those

Americans who sit idly by as passive spectators as their country is

dishonored and their democracy is dismantled, are accomplices to the

criminals in power.

 

Only the American people can restore the honor of the United States of

America.

 

/-- EP/

 

--

" Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government

talking

about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing

has

changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists,

we're

talking about getting a court order before we do so "

-George W. Bush, April 20, 2004

 

Pay your taxes so the rich don't have to.

 

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