Solomon West

essay

Letters to an American Friend

FIRST LETTER

You said to me: “You have no right to complain about the government if you don’t vote. Sure, things are not ideal right now, and they can even be downright fucked up sometimes. But you’ve been entrusted with a means to change that, to right wrongs, and if you choose not to use it you have no one to blame but yourself for the shortcomings you find yourself surrounded by.” I loved you then, but it was at that point that we diverged. “No,” I told you, “I cannot believe that the only way to change things is to try to impose my will on others, and to desperately hope I have enough people on my side to succeed. I do very much want my country to be something I can be proud of, but I do not believe force is the way to achieve that. There are means that cannot be excused. I want to be able to love my country and still love justice. I don’t want just any greatness for it, particularly a greatness born of coercion and concession. I want it to thrive as a result of justice, not at the expense of it. And if it cannot thrive in such a manner, then so be it.” You remarked: “Well, you don’t love your country.” 

That was almost a year ago, on a warm summer night we spent out on ‘the porch.’ We drank beer. We drank whiskey. We raised our voices and we yelled back and forth at each other. I know it seems obvious when you think about it, but I was truly surprised at how much time incarceration gives you to think, to remember, to contemplate. And when I think of your words — “You don’t love your country!” — and I think of them often, I feel a tightness in my chest, a frustration I had long since learned to disregard. I feel an anger I thought I had moved past some time ago. It’s an anger fueled by disappointment. A disappointment not so much in you, as in myself. My approach was too impassioned that night, I see that now, my attitude too vitriolic. I think of your words and I can’t help supposing you were right, maybe I didn’t love my country, if reproaching it for its injustices and wanting it to correspond to the best image I have of it means not loving it. Yes, I suppose maybe you were right, I didn’t love my country, if insisting it be something I can honestly be proud of amounts to not loving it. 

You said to me: “Progress is progress, regardless of how it’s achieved. A beneficial end realized through questionable means is still beneficial. And it’s certainly better than the alternative, especially when that alternative involves ongoing oppression. Life resides in the practical, the actual, not the hypothetical, not your ideal.” I agreed, in part, that a beneficial end, however realized, does by definition carry with it some benefit. But I pointed out that we weren’t constrained to only two options — beneficial or non-beneficial. “It’s not either-or,” I told you, “it’s not simply a choice between progress and oppression. There are other factors you’re discounting. There’s another path you’re not considering.” You can achieve progress, you can realize beneficial ends, and still insist that the path you take, the means you employ, can be justified in themselves. Not simply a means to an end. But every means an end in itself. Every decision, every action, justifiable from a moral perspective, your own moral perspective. Progress can be made and the path taken can be worthy of celebration, rather than the downcast eyes of shame and apology. “Certainly, this moral path may be more difficult,” I admitted, “but it’s the only means that can honestly coincide with honor and justice.” 

We want the same things. We were able to agree on that. You were surprised at the time, but I wasn’t. How could we not want the same things, yet still get along as well as we did? We agreed that in an ideal world, the ideal world, every single person would have access to healthcare, affordable food and housing, a good education system, a safe and dignified work environment. We agreed on the importance of a living wage, and both acknowledged the detrimental impact of poverty on almost all aspects of a person’s life. We condemned racism, sexism, homophobia, religious intolerance. We agreed that everyone is deserving of respect, and that even those who seem to be trying their hardest to earn your disrespect should still be handled with compassion and dignity, not anger, not hatred, not rudeness, not incivility, not vindictiveness. When it comes to the important things in life, we agreed that we were overwhelmingly in agreement. We wanted the same things then, as I’m sure we still do now. But where we disagreed, where we parted ways, was in how we felt these goals, these beneficial ends, should be achieved, could be achieved even and still be considered beneficial. 

You argued in favor of making laws, levying taxes, and instituting a variety of government programs to create and promote the world we both wanted to live in. It was with such pride that you advocated the outlawing of discrimination and championed comprehensive assistance for those in need. “Let’s even the playing field a little,” you told me, “let’s make life a little better, a little easier, for those less fortunate.” And I have to admit, it’s a tempting offer. It always has been, and I imagine it always will be. For those of us who see the flaws in your approach, it’s a constant struggle we face to overcome the temptation to emulate you. And it’s not too hard to see why. It’s because your approach takes the easy path, although not necessarily the right one, and the easy path has a way of making itself seem appealing whether it’s right or not. Why try to convince people to do the right thing, when you can just make a law that forces them to? You’ve chosen an easy answer to a complicated problem, and considering what’s at stake I can understand why you would be compelled to do so. But there are some corners that can’t be cut. There are some paths that don’t have a shortcut. Sometimes you have to take the long way, hard and disheartening as it may be, simply because no other approach can be honestly justified. 

To rely on a government to impose your morality is to take upon yourself the morality of the gun, a morality of brute force. I asked you: “Would you impose your morality on others at gunpoint? Does that even fit with your idea of morality?” You told me I was exaggerating, said I was being melodramatic. “That’s ridiculous,” you said to me. However, as long as a government maintains recourse to the use of physical force in enforcing its policies and retains a monopoly on the ‘legitimate’ use of physical force, every action that government takes can be construed as performed with a gun pointed at any who might seek to offer opposition. This includes even mundane instances, such as refusing to pay a citation issued for something as innocuous as smoking a cigarette on a public beach (which is now illegal at all California state beaches, and many city beaches too). If you refuse to pay the fine, a warrant will be issued for your arrest, and if you attempt to impede an officer of the law from then arresting you, it’s not too hard to imagine ending up with that officer’s gun pointed right at you. And then if you still refuse to submit, perhaps choosing to defend yourself with reciprocal force, well, I think we all know how that ends. There’s not much any of the rest of us can do but tell you Good luck, you’re going to need it. “It’s ridiculous,” you said, “that anyone would ever risk their life over something so insignificant.” To which I countered: “It’s ridiculous that anyone would ever take a life over something so insignificant. What’s ridiculous is that such an exaggerated response would ever be the legally legitimized reaction to something so insignificant. That you would ever support an institution that was willing to kill someone over something so insignificant, that’s what’s ridiculous.” 

You dodged the issue, claiming that the fact that such instances rarely occur was proof of the overwhelming support of the people for our present system of governance. “Even if each person does not support every individual law,” you argued, “most of the people still clearly support the overall system.” You equated obedience to approval, completely ignoring the myriad of other reasons that could lead a person to obey: ambivalent acceptance, sheer indifference, resigned futility, outright fear (just to name a few). “At the end of the day,” you argued, “what really matters is trying to make the most good and the least bad for the most people. What difference does it make how it happens, just as long as it does happen? If ten starving people can be fed through government programs versus only five fed through charitable donations, the former is clearly better, more beneficial, than the latter. See if those five people who didn’t get fed, those five people who are now starving to death, see if they care about the imaginary gun you feel the government is pointing at you. See if you can get a single one of them to commiserate with you about this perceived threat to your life, as they lie there starving to death.” 

And I told you what your kindergarten teacher had likely told you: “Two wrongs don’t make a right.” We both agreed that it was a definite wrong that people could go hungry in an industrialized country, that they could go without healthcare, education, etc. Again, we wanted the same things; on the surface, our ideal worlds looked so similar. Where you were willing to use force to achieve those aims, however, I was not. And at the end of the day, I admit, it’s a slight distinction. But it’s a distinction that is as important as man himself. It’s the distinction between courage and audacity, between pride and arrogance, between strength and oppression. It’s the distinction between the true and the false, between the just and the unjust, between the man of the future and the coward you seem intent on replacing him with. 

This is what I wanted to tell you. This is what I wanted to say to your remark, “You don’t love your country,” which has been haunting me ever since. You may think the easy path is all your country deserves, and that is certainly your right. But I don’t. I firmly believe that this country is worthy of the difficult and demanding love that is mine. I believe, without reservation, that this country is worth fighting for since it is worthy of a higher love. And to be honest, I believe that if you took the time to take an honest look at yourself, you would find that you believe the same.

July 2012