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To
the Right of Virtue
February
13, 2002
by grl2watch
 In
the capital of the mightiest nation which has ever existed,
three people were found frozen. In spite of daily jet patrols,
and a heightened level of civilian alertness, only unnatural
stillness disrobed the dead of their anonymity. In these times,
the Invisible Man is not a work of fiction.
The usual commentators were rounded up. City officials promised
to increase efforts to identify the homeless. Activists complained
that the city does not provide enough shelter space. The mayor
proclaimed that an edict to force the impaired and intoxicated
into shelters would be enforced. The police were instructed
look out for the homeless, and to "get into their face in
a nice kind of way."
Reporters hit the streets to find a newsworthy transient.
One man said that the shelters were overcrowded. Another complained
of bugs. Oddly, workers for an outreach group said that some
men refused every type of help. They would not even accept
food or blankets, and no type of persuasion would convince
them otherwise.
Consider this - a man huddled in the cold, refusing all offers
of help. Is this not self-sufficiency, honest pride, and love
of freedom in its purest form?
Our immobile emblems of the virtues, formerly of stone, are
now of flesh. Mr. Ashcroft would not hide these figures under
cloth. No, hold back the shroud, these forms are fit for our
perusal. Their stern nobility inspires us all.
With careful editing and a change of venue, the virtues of
these men could be recorded in Plutarch's Lives.
There is a glaring problem with this model of virtue. Death
is the logical end of pursuing it.
For Plutarch's heroes, the early republicans, death lacked
the sting it has for us. The highest expression of virtue
was death in many instances, and was sought, not shunned.
But why dust off the history books? Did we not see this ethos
in action on September 11?
My conservative friends, look up from your Book of Virtues.
May I suggest that you and bin Laden share the same world
view, that a model for behavior is higher than the life which
embodies the behavior? We say that our ideas are worth dying
for. Did he not say the same thing? The imbalance of one betrays
the imbalance of the other.
This imbalance has been noted before, and again, the ancients
have done the heavy lifting for us. Removing the beam from
my eyes, I read in Plato that there is a world of forms, which
hold the beautiful, the true, and the good. These forms, however,
have no comprehensible reality until they are shown forth
in the lives of humans.
To break it down, "lives are bigger than any big idea," as
Bono says.
Being centered and in balance again, I consider a living
form, bundled and lying on a steaming grate like a surrealist
barbecue. During a week of bone-chilling cold, who could pass
this life without some sympathy? Whose bed is not made uncomfortable,
even vulgar, at the thought of a metal grate for sleeping?
Such feelings are the wellspring of the concept of community.
This concept begins with compassion, advances to sharing,
and thence to the common wealth, spreading in concentric waves
from the individual to the whole. In this wider aggregate,
the democratic virtues evolve.
The more literate will interrupt me at this point. Hobbes
has held forth on this topic, and the common wealth results
from the vesting of power in an absolute and undivided authority.
Ah, here is where we differ. Hobbes thought like Ashcroft,
and I do not.
An absolute authority has no reason to share, and being absolute,
cannot be made to share. It might deem individual gestures
of compassion to be permissible and even laudable, but such
efforts do not comprise the business of the state. I say,
if we do not universally share in the simple bonds, we cannot
create the complex, in which condition the virtues of the
poor but proud have the only validity.
My kin, these transients, ward off the concern of their fellow
citizens. Indeed, the notion that others are citizens and
compatriots is, in their savage and isolating environment,
inconceivable.
In warmer, loftier spheres, the new Republicans give their
assent.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35836-2002Feb6.html
http://www.nbc4.com/news/1223480/detail.html
(click on FeedRoom graphic to see news stream)
I am an author by choice, and a human being by grace.
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