Resistance is not Futile

“… Generally a moral principle is something that puts one at variance with accepted practice. And that variance has consequences, sometimes unpleasant consequences, as the community takes its revenge on those who challenge its contradictions — who want a society actually to uphold the principles it professes to defend.

The standard that a society should actually embody its own professed principles is a utopian one, in the sense that moral principles contradict the way things really are — and always will be. How things really are — and always will be — is neither all-evil nor all-good but deficient, inconsistent, inferior. Principles invite us to do something about the morass of contradictions in which we function morally. Principles invite us to clean up our act; to become intolerant of moral laxity and compromise and cowardice and the turning away from what is upsetting: that secret gnawing of the heart that tells us that what we are doing is not right, and so counsels us that we’d be better off just not thinking about it…”

- from TomDispatch.

Susan Sontag is saying things that I have been feeling for a very long time. Those who do not understand the principles behind the viewpoints of many people in the anti-war camp are urged to read this article. Especially if you don’t understand how one can be patriotic, support the troops, and still not support an unjust war. And those in the anti-war camp are also urged to read this, a ray of hope in an otherwise dismal atmosphere.

The sooner Israel and Palestine can come to some sort of mutual agreement and end the bloodshed, the better.