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	"Facing Down the Giants: The Morality and Necessity of Engaging Colossal Evil" "A City Set on a Hill" Western civilization has a strong sense of purpose. America, in particular, has trumpeted it since the beginning -- and in my view rightly so. Ever since Winthrop's memorable "Model of Christian Charity" sermon preached aboard the Arbella, we have felt, and articulated, our high calling: We are to be "a city set on a hill," a beacon, a light for the world to follow. And woe to us, Winthrop added, if we deal falsely with our God or our purpose. From that moment, destiny became manifest, so to speak. Nothing is more clear and persistent in the American mind than its high sense of calling, as repeatedly urged, for example, in the inaugural addresses of our presidents. One of the most enlightening and inspiring studies I can think of is to read through those inaugural addresses because they demonstrate our resilient belief that America is, as Lincoln once said, "the last, best, hope of earth." If anything in America is public orthodoxy, it is that conviction. When modern leftism is not wielding the levers of American power, that conviction has proved strong and politically redemptive. By following that conviction, and bearing courageously the burdens that attend to it, we have done enormous good in the world. Under the providence of God, we have pushed back the frontiers of tyranny and evil time and again. Even though continental Europe, in its posture of pseudo-sophistication, might consider us the country cousin in the family of nations, when those same Europeans needed to be rescued -- often from themselves -- we were there to rescue them. We have done it many times and in many ways, as we have around the world. At enormous cost to ourselves, we have gone into (and out of) dozens of nations in order to make the world a better place -- even those nations that were our deadliest enemies, like Germany and Japan after World war II. What MacArthur did in Japan, and what the Marshall Plan accomplished in Europe, are without historical equal, and they indicate what we think our high calling on the planet really is. They also indicate the American penchant for forgiveness and generosity, which surpasses all others -- ever. I am not saying that we are God's chosen people. That function and that burden He has assigned to others. We are not a messiah nation. But we are a nation blessed with enormous capacity. We are a nation able to resist great evil in a world where great evil is rampant. Whether we like it or not, ability entails responsibility. We are, regarding some challenges, more able than any nation that has ever existed. We can do great good when we will. If we do not do what we can do, we are part of the problem, not part of the solution. The world needs cops, in other words, and no one else is either able or willing to fill the role. It falls to us -- or to no one. A village without cops quickly becomes unfit for human habitation. So does the global village. We have no moral sanction to decline the duty our capacities place upon us. Where and when we can, we must liberate the oppressed and uplift the poor. We most certainly cannot right every wrong, whether at home or abroad, of that there is no question. Some human ills have no political solution. To waste American blood, American treasure, and American capacity trying to fix what cannot be fixed is quixotic in the extreme. We have no obligation to do what cannot be done. But we ought to do what we can. We can, and ought to, put some things right. No doubt, sensible persons will disagree over which challenges those might be. As a nation, we must answer that vexed question the best way we can, and then try to fulfill our obligation as we see it. To date, I think we've sometimes done impressively well. But we do not fulfill our obligation as a city set on a hill simply by being a good example at home. If our calling reduces to mere detached example, then the example we set when we decline to engage and to defeat colossal evil is itself an evil example. Though we might wish it were otherwise, our moral obligations do not stop with our families or with our borders. That's another way of saying that reality gives us no other choice: Either we wait to engage colossal evil on its own terms, or we engage it on our own. But engage it we will. Colossal Evil I think that too many modern Americans no longer have a stomach for the moral demands that attach to their calling and capacity. I don't know if contemporary leftism is the cause or the symptom of that failure. But I do know that we do not admit to our cowardice: It takes courage to do so. I know also that we disguise our cowardice as something else. Cowardice always flatters itself by masquerading as prudence -- but it's just a mask. Despite our posturing on the issue of prudence, it is not prudent to be a coward. It is not prudent to neglect doing what you can and must do to thwart colossal evil. The presence of colossal evil sometimes means that we must lay down either our lives and treasure or our virtue. We have relations that require things of us -- sometimes the highest and dearest things, like life itself -- relations far beyond our families and our borders. We cannot determine the extent of our moral obligation by checking birth certificates, in order to see who is family and who is not, or by checking passports, in order to see who is American and who is not. We are part of a wider human family that puts claims upon us, and we are part of a global community that does the same. Because colossal evil stalks the world, our family and community obligations are often far wider than we wish to admit. But wishing a thing away will not make it disappear. We do not do justice to our neighbor if we are able to strike the yoke of colossal evil from his neck but fail to do it. By "colossal evil" I mean communism, militant Islam, and abortion at present; Fascism and Nazism in the recent past, and other things (like slavery) all the way back to the beginning of history. The world is rarely without colossal evil -- and the moral obligations it lays upon us to resist it as fully and effectively as we can. To set an example of self-government at home is not a good enough example to set in the face of some of the things I've mentioned above, if setting an example and not more overtly defeating great evil is what one thinks we ought to be doing. The Example of the Anti-Communists Under the shadow of colossal evil, we need to resurrect the unbreakable courage, the unflinching purpose, and the political acuity of the great mid-twentieth century anti-communists, heroes like Ronald Reagan, Clarence Manion, Douglas MacArthur, Whitaker Chambers, William F. Buckley, Barry Goldwater, and Fred Schwarz -- those strident defenders of human liberty under law, and champions of facing down the giants wherever they are. But under the inebriating influence of modern leftism and the moral relativism that so often characterizes it, too many Americans have fallen into the delusion of moral equivalence, as if there were no moral difference between democracy and communism, between fighting against evil and fighting for it -- and as if they were no evil. But America has deadly enemies, and they are evil. Their evil is their own doing, not ours. Our obligation is to consign it to defeat it in whatever moral way that task might best be accomplished. In recent decades, however, we have sometimes failed to do execute that task as we ought. For example, regarding communism, I'm one who thinks that Truman's war weariness and his political cowardice combined to prevent MacArthur from doing what MacArthur could have done and should have done, namely to drive the Chinese communists all the way back to the Great Wall, as MacArthur said he intended. It would have been an enormously difficult task, and we shrank from it. Because we shrank from it, we now face a divided Korea, the northern manifestation of which works to build nuclear weapons and to test missiles capable of delivering them against us and our allies. Because we shrank from it, we had a Viet Nam problem in which we faced China again and lost again. Because we shrank from it, we have a Taiwan problem that might bring us into direct conflict with a much stronger and deadlier communist China than ever before. Because we lacked the national will and moral fortitude to defeat the evil of Chinese communism while it was more easily defeatable, I have grave doubts that we will rise to the occasion some time in the future when the challenge will be stiffer on all counts -- unless we regain the resolute convictions and purpose of the great anti-communists mentioned above. We are not what our fathers or our grandfathers were -- the greatest generation. On this point, I think of us as among the very weakest generations. I am not proud to be a boomer. So far, my generation's legacy is weak and shameful. And I see nothing in generations X and Y to make me think the moral trough and cowardice that too often characterize America now are just temporary. Like communism, militant Islam is a potent threat to good nations and good persons around the world. So far, we have not won, nor are we close to winning, the war against it. If we do win, it could take centuries to do so, just as it has taken centuries to get even this far. I'm afraid that again we lack the national will and moral fortitude to do what is required of us to defeat this great and deadly evil. I have yet to hear a single politician say publicly about militant Islam what Reagan said was his plan regarding communism even back in the 1940s when he was president of the actors guild: "We win; they lose." But modern leftists are so far from creating, or even declaring their intention to create, victory over colossal evil that when Reagan merely called the Soviet Union by its real name -- an evil empire -- they lapsed into international paroxysms of allegedly prudential fear. The same holds true of abortion. It is a colossal evil, and to it we lose the equivalent of a World Trade Center attack every day, and have done so for decades. The justification we most often give for our dilatory and shameless under-reaction to this colossal evil is prudence, as if we were afraid that if we addressed abortion more stridently someone might die. Communism in China, Cuba, Venezuela, and N. Korea (and resurgent communists at the helm in Russia), militant Islam around the globe, and abortion virtually everywhere ought to be defeated. Our too modest approach until now has not been up to the task. More is required of us. The exact nature and extent of the "more" is a matter of prudence, not cowardice, and about it we must debate. But the "more" would have been less if we had done in the past what we have left to the future. Whatever else prudence might be, it is not that. I am not saying that colossal evil ought always to be met with military force. Sometimes it must. But almost never will colossal evil be effectively curtailed passively. Except for the remarkable victory of Wilberforce over slavery in Britain, I honestly cannot think of a single historical instance where it has been. Something more aggressive is normally required. It takes a force to check a force. What more shall we do? I do not pretend to know. Let us debate it carefully to see where real prudence, not cowardice, truly leads. But I strongly suspect that real prudence requires us to do a great deal more than we have ever done.
	Copyright © 2006. Michael Bauman. All rights reserved.	date modified: 5 July 2006 Website Hit Counters

"Facing Down the Giants: The Morality and Necessity of Engaging Colossal Evil"

"A City Set on a Hill"

Western civilization has a strong sense of purpose. America, in particular, has trumpeted it since the beginning -- and in my view rightly so. Ever since Winthrop's memorable "Model of Christian Charity" sermon preached aboard the Arbella, we have felt, and articulated, our high calling: We are to be "a city set on a hill," a beacon, a light for the world to follow. And woe to us, Winthrop added, if we deal falsely with our God or our purpose.

            From that moment, destiny became manifest, so to speak. Nothing is more clear and persistent in the American mind than its high sense of calling, as repeatedly urged, for example, in the inaugural addresses of our presidents. One of the most enlightening and inspiring studies I can think of is to read through those inaugural addresses because they demonstrate our resilient belief that America is, as Lincoln once said, "the last, best, hope of earth." If anything in America is public orthodoxy, it is that conviction. When modern leftism is not wielding the levers of American power, that conviction has proved strong and politically redemptive.

            By following that conviction, and bearing courageously the burdens that attend to it, we have done enormous good in the world. Under the providence of God, we have pushed back the frontiers of tyranny and evil time and again. Even though continental Europe, in its posture of pseudo-sophistication, might consider us the country cousin in the family of nations, when those same Europeans needed to be rescued -- often from themselves -- we were there to rescue them. We have done it many times and in many ways, as we have around the world. At enormous cost to ourselves, we have gone into (and out of) dozens of nations in order to make the world a better place -- even those nations that were our deadliest enemies, like Germany and Japan after World war II. What MacArthur did in Japan, and what the Marshall Plan accomplished in Europe, are without historical equal, and they indicate what we think our high calling on the planet really is.   They also indicate the American penchant for forgiveness and generosity, which surpasses all others -- ever.

I am not saying that we are God's chosen people. That function and that burden He has assigned to others. We are not a messiah nation. But we are a nation blessed with enormous capacity. We are a nation able to resist great evil in a world where great evil is rampant. Whether we like it or not, ability entails responsibility. We are, regarding some challenges, more able than any nation that has ever existed. We can do great good when we will. If we do not do what we can do, we are part of the problem, not part of the solution. The world needs cops, in other words, and no one else is either able or willing to fill the role. It falls to us -- or to no one. A village without cops quickly becomes unfit for human habitation. So does the global village.

We have no moral sanction to decline the duty our capacities place upon us. Where and when we can, we must liberate the oppressed and uplift the poor. We most certainly cannot right every wrong, whether at home or abroad, of that there is no question. Some human ills have no political solution. To waste American blood, American treasure, and American capacity trying to fix what cannot be fixed is quixotic in the extreme. We have no obligation to do what cannot be done. But we ought to do what we can. We can, and ought to, put some things right. No doubt, sensible persons will disagree over which challenges those might be. As a nation, we must answer that vexed question the best way we can, and then try to fulfill our obligation as we see it. To date, I think we've sometimes done impressively well.

But we do not fulfill our obligation as a city set on a hill simply by being a good example at home. If our calling reduces to mere detached example, then the example we set when we decline to engage and to defeat colossal evil is itself an evil example. Though we might wish it were otherwise, our moral obligations do not stop with our families or with our borders. That's another way of saying that reality gives us no other choice: Either we wait to engage colossal evil on its own terms, or we engage it on our own. But engage it we will.

Colossal Evil

I think that too many modern Americans no longer have a stomach for the moral demands that attach to their calling and capacity. I don't know if contemporary leftism is the cause or the symptom of that failure. But I do know that we do not admit to our cowardice: It takes courage to do so. I know also that we disguise our cowardice as something else. Cowardice always flatters itself by masquerading as prudence -- but it's just a mask. Despite our posturing on the issue of prudence, it is not prudent to be a coward. It is not prudent to neglect doing what you can and must do to thwart colossal evil.

The presence of colossal evil sometimes means that we must lay down either our lives and treasure or our virtue. We have relations that require things of us -- sometimes the highest and dearest things, like life itself -- relations far beyond our families and our borders.

We cannot determine the extent of our moral obligation by checking birth certificates, in order to see who is family and who is not, or by checking passports, in order to see who is American and who is not. We are part of a wider human family that puts claims upon us, and we are part of a global community that does the same. Because colossal evil stalks the world, our family and community obligations are often far wider than we wish to admit. But wishing a thing away will not make it disappear. We do not do justice to our neighbor if we are able to strike the yoke of colossal evil from his neck but fail to do it.

By "colossal evil" I mean communism, militant Islam, and abortion at present; Fascism and Nazism in the recent past, and other things (like slavery) all the way back to the beginning of history. The world is rarely without colossal evil -- and the moral obligations it lays upon us to resist it as fully and effectively as we can. To set an example of self-government at home is not a good enough example to set in the face of some of the things I've mentioned above, if setting an example and not more overtly defeating great evil is what one thinks we ought to be doing.

The Example of the Anti-Communists

Under the shadow of colossal evil, we need to resurrect the unbreakable courage, the unflinching purpose, and the political acuity of the great mid-twentieth century anti-communists, heroes like Ronald Reagan, Clarence Manion, Douglas MacArthur, Whitaker Chambers, William F. Buckley, Barry Goldwater, and Fred Schwarz -- those strident defenders of human liberty under law, and champions of facing down the giants wherever they are.

But under the inebriating influence of modern leftism and the moral relativism that so often characterizes it, too many Americans have fallen into the delusion of moral equivalence, as if there were no moral difference between democracy and communism, between fighting against evil and fighting for it -- and as if they were no evil. But America has deadly enemies, and they are evil. Their evil is their own doing, not ours. Our obligation is to consign it to defeat it in whatever moral way that task might best be accomplished. In recent decades, however, we have sometimes failed to do execute that task as we ought.

For example, regarding communism, I'm one who thinks that Truman's war weariness and his political cowardice combined to prevent MacArthur from doing what MacArthur could have done and should have done, namely to drive the Chinese communists all the way back to the Great Wall, as MacArthur said he intended. It would have been an enormously difficult task, and we shrank from it. Because we shrank from it, we now face a divided Korea, the northern manifestation of which works to build nuclear weapons and to test missiles capable of delivering them against us and our allies. Because we shrank from it, we had a Viet Nam problem in which we faced China again and lost again. Because we shrank from it, we have a Taiwan problem that might bring us into direct conflict with a much stronger and deadlier communist China than ever before.

Because we lacked the national will and moral fortitude to defeat the evil of Chinese communism while it was more easily defeatable, I have grave doubts that we will rise to the occasion some time in the future when the challenge will be stiffer on all counts -- unless we regain the resolute convictions and purpose of the great anti-communists mentioned above. We are not what our fathers or our grandfathers were -- the greatest generation. On this point, I think of us as among the very weakest generations. I am not proud to be a boomer. So far, my generation's legacy is weak and shameful. And I see nothing in generations X and Y to make me think the moral trough and cowardice that too often characterize America now are just temporary.

Like communism, militant Islam is a potent threat to good nations and good persons around the world. So far, we have not won, nor are we close to winning, the war against it. If we do win, it could take centuries to do so, just as it has taken centuries to get even this far. I'm afraid that again we lack the national will and moral fortitude to do what is required of us to defeat this great and deadly evil. I have yet to hear a single politician say publicly about militant Islam what Reagan said was his plan regarding communism even back in the 1940s when he was president of the actors guild: "We win; they lose." But modern leftists are so far from creating, or even declaring their intention to create, victory over colossal evil that when Reagan merely called the Soviet Union by its real name -- an evil empire -- they lapsed into international paroxysms of allegedly prudential fear.

The same holds true of abortion. It is a colossal evil, and to it we lose the equivalent of a World Trade Center attack every day, and have done so for decades. The justification we most often give for our dilatory and shameless under-reaction to this colossal evil is prudence, as if we were afraid that if we addressed abortion more stridently someone might die.

Communism in China, Cuba, Venezuela, and N. Korea (and resurgent communists at the helm in Russia), militant Islam around the globe, and abortion virtually everywhere ought to be defeated. Our too modest approach until now has not been up to the task. More is required of us. The exact nature and extent of the "more" is a matter of prudence, not cowardice, and about it we must debate. But the "more" would have been less if we had done in the past what we have left to the future. Whatever else prudence might be, it is not that.

I am not saying that colossal evil ought always to be met with military force. Sometimes it must. But almost never will colossal evil be effectively curtailed passively. Except for the remarkable victory of Wilberforce over slavery in Britain, I honestly cannot think of a single historical instance where it has been. Something more aggressive is normally required. It takes a force to check a force.

What more shall we do? I do not pretend to know. Let us debate it carefully to see where real prudence, not cowardice, truly leads. But I strongly suspect that real prudence requires us to do a great deal more than we have ever done.

date modified:
5 July 2006

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