subject: By virtue and blood : An Individual Fight [print this page] By virtue and blood : An Individual Fight
II-"Virtue and Blood"
An Individual Fight
by
Dima EL SAYED
I wanted to write a piece on the constitutional challenge facing young Arab generations, now that some of them can finally participate in creating the Law founding their new democracies, but "Law, as Aristotle said is, Reason free from Passion"And being dispassionate in this time is only possible if one was dead!
So I decided instead, to write about "wrong and right" about "Morality": the forgotten source of law, and the necessary foundation of Politics. In a period where immorality has become as universal as the values today's freedom fighters are dying for!
As the dictators in the Arab world still hang on to the old "clash of civilizations" theory, waiving the threat of a so called west to scare their uprising people, and that of "Islamism" to incite this very same "West" to defend their falling regimesthis theory turns into what it always was, a dust of history without any ontological justification.
Isn't the culture ridiculed and epitomized as the "Burka Culture" the one unveiling the face of the Empire whose leaders' silence could only be described as criminal!
Aren't the people accused of not respecting freedom, aren't they fighting in its name now, dying in its name!
Suddenly as the wall of fear starts falling, people wake up to see there were no scary "Other"/enemy behind the wall, just another fellow human being, a neighbor, who believes in Dignity, freedom and yes Democracy! A "Good" neighbor who could not really belong on the "Axis of Evil" and who does not hesitate to throw his shoe at Qaddafis face with the same rage he threw it at Bush's and yes, for the same reasons:
Oil and natural resources theft, mass massacres, tortures, etc . "Wrong" remains ! It simply is not where we were told to look for it .
What is Wrong and what is Right? And isn't knowing the answer to this question a necessary prerequisite to building a democratic state? According to the Greeks it is.
And we go back to them to shed a light on the subject, for they are not only the founding fathers of "Democracy" but because translating and reinterpreting their theoretical work is an old Arab tradition, and I have the honor of following the great examples of Ibn Rushd, al kindi . and many, many others and because it seems creating democracies is going to become a new Arab tradition!
Aristotle argues that Politics must bring about the virtuous life in the citizenry, "and citizens must actively participate in politics if they are to be happy and virtuous!"
A virtuous citizen, makes a virtuous city and leads within a goof life
in his Nicomachean Ethics he further explains that "The end [or goal] of politics is the best of ends; and the main concern of politics is to engender a certain character in the citizens and to make them good and disposed to perform noble actions."
It is the common advantage, the common good that brings citizens together so that they attain each "the noble life"!
Now it may seem an outdated view on politics or Morality but Jacques Maritain
one of the architects of the 1948 Universal Human Rights Declaration founded his theory on the impossible separation between the Political (law) and Morality on this !
However, "traditional democracies" seem to have been operating for some time now on a rather Machiavellian interpretation of politics, a dangerous one as it empties the concept of Democracy from its meaning, leads to people distrusting their representatives, and thus to the very collapse of Democracy itself .
The enemies of Democracy, are not only mummified incapable dictators, or their modern-looking-backward-thinking sons, but the world ruling oligarchy that legitimizes their exactions in the name of its own profit, offers silence and at best lamentable indignations when its crimes against humanity are rendered public, while it supplies the necessary weaponry until they are!
French people showed some indignation over the tight knots between their government, Ben Ali and Mubarak's regimes yet can they really claim to be shocked? not when Sarkozy is called the "Bling-bling President" in reference to his love for money and all things shiny, and is infamous for his racist and Islamophobic discourses. not when the figures of their socialist party join the Right so close to its extreme, in order to advance their careers and become ministers, and surely not when the only socialist candidate they seem to be thinking of for the new presidential election is the head of the World Bank?!
Can the Americans claim to be shocked by their governments silence and infallible support to dictatorships, when these governments have as good as legalized torture, exported its practice, created Abu ghraib and Guantanamo, and are responsible for the most heinous crimes against humanity in Iraq in the name of freedom.
Can Italians be surprised by any military support Berlusconi might offer Qaddafi, when the first is at best a Caligula the second crazier than Nero!
Should we wonder about Merkel's and Cameron's previous attacks on Multiculturalism when their silence today is more relevant then their words!
And can we now claim to ignore that western democracies are stumbling, that freedom of speech there has lost so much ground, that the right to vote seems most of the time inefficient, as the gap seems to grow wider between the governments and the people!
Virtuous citizens are willing to die for freedom and dignity and want to live up to them, virtuous citizens refuse violence and blood shedding among their own people, virtuous citizens have no particular nationality or race or religion, to them the "Other" is only Vice and its perpetrators, virtuous citizens only should be responsible for the state's politics as they should inspire trust in the people they are supposed to represent!
As the revolution spreads its bloodied wings, the people continue to refuse "Wrong", vehemently declaring everywhere that they are willing to pay the price for "cleaning up" their countries: Let right be done! Let right be done, In Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrein, and lift your greedy hands of our resources: those are the peoples demands and they are addressed to both the foreign and national oppressors.
Virtue today may have an Arab face but it is and always was universal, because it is about basic human attributes and never a question of veils, or niqabs as some so called politicians want us to believe.
Still, virtue does not exist without vice, and no man is free of either. Just like no revolution exists without a counter revolution, and the people without a "lumpen prolerariat" that may bring camels and swords back into the heart of the 21st century.
Just like brining down the "order", ( the exact translation of the word "Nitham", used in demonstrations) requires accepting temporary dis-order, because Democracies can only see the light by virtue and blood, And our fight, while universal (previous article) is also deeply individual: One's fight against his or her own self. After all ,"God does not change a peoples lot unless they change what is in their hearts"!
