Hamas Has Exposed the Moral Bankruptcy of Self-Proclaimed "Progressives"

Black Lives Matter supports Hamas, which is not surprising because antisemitism has been a major problem in Leftist Black circles for decades. Although some prominent Black individuals--including boxer Floyd Mayweather, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, and New York Rep. Ritchie Torres--have condemned Hamas and offered support to the victims of Hamas' October 7 mass casualty terrorist attack, as a whole the Black community has either been silent or has been openly supportive of Hamas and openly hostile toward Israel. This is a tragic departure from the beliefs and practices of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who understood that anti-Zionism is often used as a code word for antisemitism; when members of the Civil Rights Movement spewed anti-Zionist rhetoric he declared, "Don’t talk like that! When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You’re talking antisemitism!"

Feminists and proponents of "Me Too" have been conspicuously silent about Hamas' deliberate, planned usage of rape against civilians, which is by definition a war crime. 

Hamas' double war crime of using Gazan civilians as human shields while launching rockets against Israeli civilians is also either ignored or excused in Leftist circles.

In general, it is crystal clear that "intersectionality," "antiracism," and "social justice" are empty slogans that do not apply to Jews. Hamas kills Jews because they are Jews, and the self-proclaimed "progressives" support Hamas based on a perverse and twisted worldview that condemns all white people as oppressors while excusing any actions committed by non-white people as justifiable "resistance." In this twisted worldview, Jews are classified as white even though white supremacists/Nazis reject the notion that Jews are white (and the reality is that individual Jews may be members of any racial group, and the Jewish community as a whole cannot correctly be classified as white or any other race).

This is not surprising to anyone who has read with understanding the Marxist ideas that form the fundamental underpinnings of Critical Race Theory and the other anti-intellectual nonsense spewed by the self-proclaimed "progressives" who have taken over so many college campuses and so many media outlets. Intersectionality, antiracism, BLM, "Me Too," and Critical Race Theory are not about helping the people and groups that they are purportedly designed to help; they are about fundamentally restructuring society away from being capitalist and democratic and toward being Marxist and authoritarian (which starts with increasing the government's control and power over every aspect of our lives, which is part of the Leftist program). In short, those concepts and movements are not only often inherently antisemitic but they are not supporting anything that is positive. American society specifically and Western civilization in general are based on bedrock principles that are anathema to Marxists. As Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic explained in their 2001 book Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, "Unlike traditional civil rights, which embraces incrementalism and step-by-step progress, critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism and neutral principles of constitutional law." 

People and groups who attack the "very foundations of the liberal order" are fundamentally incapable of distinguishing between a terrorist group like Hamas that tortures children, rapes women, massacres civilians, and takes civilians hostage and a democratic nation like Israel that is fighting a defensive war. Civilian hostages held captive by Hamas are not morally equivalent to terrorists arrested by Israel, convicted in a court of law, and sentenced to prison sentences, but many media outlets act as if there is no difference between Hamas terrorizing civilians and Israel lawfully detaining terrorists and criminals.

Instead, self-proclaimed "progressives" divide the world into oppressors and oppressed--much like intellectual lightweight Ibram X. Kendi divides the world into racists and antiracists--with the oppressors almost always being white. Oppressed people are permitted to do anything in service of "resistance," while oppressors have no rights. The liberal order speaks of basic rights such as life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. The self-proclaimed "progressives" look at murdered Jews and feel joy that the resistance has been successful.

Here is a description of the grotesque reality of just a fraction of what Hamas did on October 7:

At a sidebar event at the United Nations to raise awareness of sexual crimes committed by Hamas during the October 7th massacre, army reservist Shari Mendes spoke about what her unit saw at the Shura base as they prepared female bodies for burial.

The event, entitled "Hear Our Voices: Sexual and gender-based violence in the October 7 Hamas terror attack," had as its keynote speaker, Sheryl Sandberg formerly an executive at Facebook, as well as other speakers, including those who, like Mendes, dealt directly with the dead bodies of women.

The purpose of the event was to demand that the United Nations regard the sexual violence committed by Hamas as war crimes and to address the silence in the UN and among many global women’s group.

After nearly two months, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres announced an investigation into the crimes.

Shari Mendes reported that many of the corpses had tense facial expressions and clenched fists that expressed the agony and torment of their final moments.

She described one female soldier's arm was broken in so many places it was difficult to fit inside a body bag. The entire side of one corpse was entirely shredded by a grenade and hard to identify.

Mendes reported that her team commander saw bodies of female soldiers that had been shot in the crotch, the breasts and inside the vagina.

The faces of many were shot many times in what appeared to be an intent to mutilate them beyond recognition.

Mendes said, "Heads and faces were covered in blood. They were shot in the eyes, face, and skull." One female soldier’s face had been shot so many times that the head had nearly fallen off.

Others' brains were falling out of their skulls.

"Our unit has seen bodies that were beheaded or had limbs cut off, mutilated," Mendes said. "One young woman came in with no legs: they had been cut off. We saw several severed heads, one with a large kitchen knife still embedded in the neck."

Mendes said that, in some cases, the disfigurement of the faces was done after death, because it was clear they were made when there was no more blood left in the body and the corpses had already bled out.

"Charred remains arrived and had to be identified and prepared for burial. These bodies were burned beyond recognition, often without arms or legs; they did not resemble anything human," Mendes said.

"Sometimes we sifted through piles of ash that disintegrated as we touched them. These soldiers were burnt alive at very high temperatures."

Mendes described the sheer scale of the task, "Body bags just kept coming in all shapes and sizes. Many were oozing liquids and the floors were wet. The smell of death was already unbearable."

She continued, "It is impossible to overemphasize the number of bodies we were dealing with; the sense of shock and despair."

Self-proclaimed "progressives" are fundamentally incapable of condemning the brutalities described above because those brutalities were committed by Muslims against Jews; in the binary "progressive" taxonomy, Jews are oppressors because they are classified as white, while Muslims are oppressed because they are not classified as white (the sheer idiocy of these definitions from the standpoint of genetics, cultural identity, and even physical appearance could be the topic of another essay). The Nazis targeted Jews for genocide because they classified Jews as "life unworthy of life." The Soviet Union massacred millions of people as part of the process of supposedly purging the country of bourgeois influence, and Cambodia underwent a similar process during the "Killing Fields" era in the 1970s. The twisted thinking is the same, whether the twisted thinking emanates from the Right or from the Left: the Enemy is not human and deserves no mercy.

Therefore, the antisemitism of the self-proclaimed "progressives" is not a glitch or a fluke; it is a natural outgrowth of deeply flawed thinking, and it can only be cured by addressing those deep flaws. Racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry exist and should be fought against--but Critical Race Theory, intersectionality, "Me Too," and other catchphrase movements are not about fighting bigotry but about undermining Western civilization; until that is understood, our country and our world will keep heading down a dangerous path toward death and destruction that will culminate in the obliteration of the foundations of the liberal order that is the best hope for uplifting all of humanity.

As is often the case, the Jewish people are the canary in the coal mine; the way that the self-proclaimed "progressives" not only disregard Jewish suffering but joyfully celebrate it foreshadows the Marxist revolution that they hope will restructure society, just as it restructured the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, Cuba, North Korea, and many other countries. They assure us that this time Marxism/socialism will have a different, positive outcome, but their leaders know better and their followers are prototypical "useful idiots." 

What can be done to curb the malign influence of the self-proclaimed "progressives"? 

Here are a few steps:

1) Don't vote for self-proclaimed "progressives." We need to vote the self-proclaimed "Squad" and all of their allies out of Congress (and out of any other elected offices) as soon as possible.

2) Don't contribute money, time, or any other support to organizations that are founded on Marxist, anti-democratic principles. If you do a little research, it is not difficult to identify these organizations, and it is also helpful to understand that most of them use the same catchphrases/terminology that provide great warning signs of their true nature/goals.

3) Fight against the infiltration of pseudo-intellectual nonsense into the education system. No reasonable person is saying that slavery should not be taught about in the schools, or that racism should not be discussed--but the notion that entire groups of people can be classified as oppressed or oppressors (or racists or antiracists) should be consigned to the dustbin of discredited concepts. 

4) If you went to college, urge your alma mater to sign up with Universities United Against Terrorism. My undergrad alma mater Excelsior University signed up after I contacted the university president; shamefully, my law school alma mater University of Dayton has not signed up. Make it clear to colleges, corporations, and charities that you will redirect your contributions away from institutions that lack the moral clarity/courage to condemn Hamas and toward institutions that display moral clarity and courage. 

The self-proclaimed "progressives" are defiant, loud, and strident, but they have not taken over society--yet. It is our duty to make sure that they never do while also being aware that our society is not perfect and while working toward improving our society in the areas where it falls short of its foundational ideals.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Legacy

Today, as we celebrate and commemorate the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., it is tempting--but risky--to speculate about what he would think, say, and do if he were still with us today. I cringe any time someone talks about a specific niche issue that did not exist during Dr. King's lifetime and then declares exactly what Dr. King would have supposedly thought about that niche issue. 

Although it is presumptuous to assume to know what Dr. King would have thought about issues that did not arise during his lifetime, his words and actions help us understand what he thought about some issues that existed during his lifetime and still exist today. Attorney Clarence Jones played a major role as Dr. King's trusted lieutenant during the 1960s. No one is more qualified to speak about Dr. King's core beliefs. In an April 2006 article titled The Man Who Kept King's Secrets, Douglas Brinkley relates what he learned from his interviews with Jones:

Curiously, King and Jones also shared a deep mutual respect for Judaism. Influenced by [civil rights activist Stanley] Levison, they had developed into staunch supporters of Israel. "Jewish Americans, along with a few guys like Rockefeller, financed the civil-rights movement," Jones explains. "And Martin's sentiments regarding Jews were not opportunistic, as some have claimed. It was real. He consistently sought to maintain the historic coalition and alliance with leaders of the Jewish community." According to Jones, King took great solace in the teachings of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, author of the 1923 classic I and Thou.

"As King interpreted Buber, there were 'I-Thou' people (Good Samaritans who had a relationship with God) and 'I-It' people (folks like the Black Power cabal that were self-centered)," Jones maintains. "He loathed anti-Semitism and was enraged by the rise of the Black Power movement, of guys like Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, and others who wanted to reduce the leadership role of whites in black organizations. Martin would question how anyone who had any familiarity with the biblical and political history of the Jewish people could have anything but the most profound admiration and respect for the Jewish community."

No one can say for sure what Dr. King would think, say, and do if he were alive today, but based on his consistent statements and actions it is reasonable to assert that Dr. King would condemn without equivocation and hesitation the antisemitism and anti-Zionism spouted by self-proclaimed "progressives" the same way that Dr. King condemned the antisemitism and anti-Zionism spouted by Carmichael (later known as Kwame Ture) and H. Rap Brown. "Self-centered" is a perfect way to describe many people and organizations who are more interested in what they can do for themselves under the guise of activism than what they can do for others.

A little over two years ago, Jones condemned antisemitism--and Black antisemitism in particular--in the strongest possible terms: 

Throughout this year, the Anti-Defamation League and others have repeatedly cited the unprecedented incidents of antisemitic terror occurring in our nation. As Rabbi Joachim Printz memorialized in his speech immediately before Dr. King took the podium at the March on Washington, he said these words, "When I was the rabbi of the Jewish community in Berlin under the Hitler regime, I learned many things. The most important thing that I learned under those tragic circumstances was that bigotry and hatred are not the most urgent problem. The most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful and the most tragic problem is silence…America must not become a nation of onlookers. America must not remain silent."

I believe that King would call upon the moral leaders of the Black community to lift their voices in support of our Jewish brothers and sisters, a community from out of the trauma of the Holocaust, understood persecution and hate, that stood with the Black community during the Civil Rights Movement. I know because I was there. I made the phone calls to Jewish labor leaders and donors, attorneys, educators and rabbis. So today, I call upon the African American community to condemn antisemitism with the same vigor that we condemn its evil twin of racism.

"Men often hate each other because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don't know each other; they don't know each other because they cannot communicate; they cannot communicate because they are separated." The wisdom of King once again. And in this light, I further call upon leaders of the Black and Jewish communities, to rekindle the great alliance that led our country in the expansion of civility and civil rights for all people. Together, we must continue to be the moral compass that America so desperately needs.

Next month, Jan 15th, 2020, our nation will again commemorate our national weekend celebrating the legacy of Dr. King. The twin issues of ubiquitous gun violence and resurgent anti-Semitism and racism should be the cornerstone of next year's commemoration of Dr. King's 91st birthday. And please consider joining me and other leaders across the nation in partnering with the Philos Project's campaign against antisemitism and racism as they provide leadership and education on this issue. Visit www.philosproject.org or email info@philosproject.org for more information.

No one--not even Dr. King's family--can say for sure what Dr. King would have thought or said about Critical Race Theory, Black Lives Matter, and other ideologies and movements that emerged after he was assassinated, but to the extent that any ideology or movement promotes antisemitism Dr. King would have condemned that antisemitism the same way that he condemned the antisemitism of the Black Power movement and the Nation of Islam. 

During TNT's otherwise enlightening and moving "In the Arena" episode today, Dr. Michael Eric Dyson asserted that anyone who claims to support what Dr. King did in the 1950s and 1960s must also support Critical Race Theory and Black Lives Matter because CRT and BLM respresent the continuation of Dr. King's work--but, to the significant extent that CRT and BLM promote antisemitism there is no doubt that Dr. King would be appalled, as should all of us.

It is important to remember that Dr. King fought and died promoting the dream/goal that we would one day live in a society in which each person is judged by the content of his (or her) character. Any form of hatred--including but not limited to antisemitism--is the antithesis of Dr. King's dream.

Violence, Non-Violent Non-Cooperation, and Human Nature

Violence is an inescapable reality of life. It is not possible to survive without committing violence and, indeed, one's ability to survive is directly proportional to one's capacity to both withstand and deliver violence. If you doubt this premise then just consider how you obtain food, water and shelter: none of those essential commodities can be procured without committing violence against other life forms, from tiny microbes to large plants and animals. Killing is an essential part of living.

Non-violence is an aspirational ideal for human beings interacting with other human beings, but elevating non-violence as the highest ideal can sometimes endanger the most innocent and vulnerable among us. The truth of that seemingly paradoxical statement can be seen by closely examining the concept of non-violent non-cooperation. Mahatma Gandhi's campaign of non-violent non-cooperation is credited with ending the British Empire's rule over his native India. Gandhi instructed his followers to not fight the British militarily, but to refuse to cooperate with the British through boycotts and other measures. Gandhi's goal was to highlight the inequities inherent in British control over the Indian people. Gandhi did not view the British as inherently evil; rather, he sought to expose the evil inherent in colonial rule, and thus exercise moral suasion over British society to end such colonial rule.

Gandhi's ideal of non-violent non-cooperation worked in India because Britain, while flawed, was a nation built on the rule of law. Similarly, when Dr. Martin Luther King adopted Gandhi's principles as cornerstones for the Civil Rights Movement in America, he operated under the basic assumption that non-violent non-cooperation would force the American people to see the evil inherent in Jim Crow laws/segregation, and thus exercise moral suasion over American society to end Jim Crow laws/segregation. Britain and America did not seek to annihilate the Indian and Black people respectively, and thus it was possible to awaken the collective consciences of those countries to the injustices inherent in the way those countries treated Indian and Black people respectively. 

Non-violent non-cooperation can be very effective in open, democratic countries that have racist laws and/or racist subcultures. Non-violent non-cooperation is much less likely to be effective in closed, non-democratic countries that consider mass extermination to be an acceptable policy choice. Failing to distinguish between open, democratic countries, and closed, non-democratic countries is to engage in what Vladimir Nabokov termed "poshlost," for which he gave the following explanation: "Poshlost speaks in such concepts as 'America is no better than Russia' or 'We all share in Germany's guilt.' ...Listing in one breath Auschwitz, Hiroshima, and Vietnam is seditious poshlost."
 
Although violent and murderous acts were committed by both British and American forces, it is inconceivable that either country would have made a policy decision to kill every Indian or to kill every Black person. Violence was used as a method of repression and subjugation, with the goal of control, not genocide. Faced with the realization that violence was not effective--and that violence was increasingly viewed by the larger population as immoral and unjust--Britain ultimately ended colonial rule over India, and America ended legally sanctioned segregation.

Non-violent non-cooperation was not a viable strategy when confronting Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, regimes that had no reservations about murdering millions of people. Nazi Germany developed an Endlosung ("Final Solution") policy that prescribed the murder of every Jewish man, woman, and child under Nazi rule. The Nazis meticulously catalogued the Jewish population of Europe, including specific classifications of full-Jews, half-Jews, and so forth, and then relentlessly enacted this policy, even to the extent of diverting personnel and materiel from the war effort to kill as many Jews as possible; the 1942 Wannsee Conference documented the goal of murdering 11,000,000 European Jews under this policy, including the Jewish populations not just of countries currently under Nazi rule, but also the Jewish population of Britain, and the Jewish populations of neutral countries such as Sweden and Switzerland. The Wannsee Protocol meticulously describes how the Nazis planned to implement "the final solution of the European Jewish question" by genocide conducted in various stages and through various specific means. Although the document is filled with euphemisms for genocide, these chilling passages clarify the ultimate goal of the Endlosung program (emphasis added):

Under proper guidance, in the course of the final solution the Jews are to be allocated for appropriate labor in the East. Able-bodied Jews, separated according to sex, will be taken in large work columns to these areas for work on roads, in the course of which action doubtless a large portion will be eliminated by natural causes.

The possible final remnant will, since it will undoubtedly consist of the most resistant portion, have to be treated accordingly, because it is the product of natural selection and would, if released, act as a the seed of a new Jewish revival (see the experience of history.)

In the course of the practical execution of the final solution, Europe will be combed through from west to east. Germany proper, including the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, will have to be handled first due to the housing problem and additional social and political necessities.

Had Nazi Germany succeeded in conquering the world, there is every reason to believe that the Endlosung policy would have been extended world-wide with the goal of killing every Jewish person.

Therefore, Gandhi's public assertion that European Jewry should accept without resistance whatever fate Hitler's executioners delivered is not only absurd but it is obscene. As Rabbi Shmuley Boteach explains, "What Gandhi failed to realize is that when dealing with moral or at least somewhat humane governments, nonviolent resistance has its place. But when dealing with murderous barbarians such as ISIS or the Nazis, no level of nonviolent resistance will ever change their minds. Gandhi's philosophy would only guarantee that they take over the world."

Rabbi Shlomo Riskin explains that to overcome certain forms of oppression one must understand that sometimes violence is necessary to survive:

This is certainly a major reason for Moses' ability to lead the Jewish people: he was raised in the palace of Pharaoh, without the fear of a slave, devoid of a slave mentality. Slavery is a tragedy, and one of its consequences is how the victim ends up internalizing the accusations made against him, believing himself to be a worthless parasite, incapable of fighting for his rights. Indeed, Moses learns this lesson after he slays the Egyptian task-master, an act he had probably hoped would incite and inspire the Hebrew slaves to rise up against their captors and demand their freedom. The very next day, when he tries to break up a fight between two Hebrews, they taunt him for having killed the Egyptian; instead of hailing Moses as a hero because he risked his own life to save a fellow Jew, they throw his actions back into his face. Moses now realizes ". . . the incident is known.." (Exodus 15:2). If he wants to save his life, he must flee at once. Slavery corrupts captor and captive alike.

There is yet another issue. Power may corrupt, absolute power may corrupt absolutely--but powerlessness corrupts most of all. A magnificent post-Holocaust Australian play, "The Edge of Night," has a former Kapo declare: "There were no heroes in Auschwitz, there were only those who were murdered and those who survived." And a slave feels impotent, uncertain of his ability to obtain food, and becomes almost obsessed with the desire for a piece of bread--almost at any cost. From this second perspective, the desert possesses not only a stark landscape but also a stark moral message concerning the transformation of an enslaved Hebrew into a freed Hebrew. The manna, which descended daily from heaven, was intended to change the labor camp mentality of greedy individuals in Egypt into a nation in which "...the one who had taken more did not have any extra, and the one who had taken less did not have too little. They gathered exactly enough for each one to eat..." (Exodus 16:17-18)

Moses understood that non-violent non-cooperation was not a viable option in Pharoah's Egypt, even if many of his Hebrew countrymen had been dragged down by the slave mentality to the point that they could not imagine resisting their oppressors. Sometimes, survival means nothing less than kill or be killed.

Unfortunately, many people are either unwilling or unable to discern the true nature of the world; there is a facile tendency to put the most positive spin on even the most horrifying events, a tendency that Cynthia Ozick excoriated in her October 6, 1997 New Yorker essay titled "Who Owns Anne Frank?" Ozick ruefully notes that the signature quote from Anne Frank's diary--"I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart"--does not at all capture the overall tone of Frank's writing. Ozick asks, "Why should this sentence be taken as emblematic, and not, for example, another?" Ozick then quotes from Frank's May 6, 1944 diary entry: "There's a destructive urge in people, the urge to rage, murder and kill." Ozick comments, "These are words that do not soften, ameliorate, or give the lie to the pervasive horror of her time. Nor do they pull the wool over the eyes of history."

Anne Frank's story has been sanitized for public consumption, but the true, complete story is not uplifting or positive. Anne Frank was a young girl whose family was forced into hiding solely because they were Jewish; Anne, her sister Margot and her mother Edith were murdered in Nazi concentration camps as a result of the Endlosung policy described above. Three weeks before Anne and her family were captured by the Nazis--after being betrayed for the equivalent of about one dollar per person--Anne wrote, "I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness. I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of millions...In the meantime, I must hold on to my ideals. Perhaps the day will come when I'll be able to realize them." A few months earlier, Anne wrote, "I've asked myself again and again whether it wouldn't have been better if we hadn't gone into hiding, if we were dead now and didn't have to go through this misery...Let something happen soon...Nothing can be more crushing than this anxiety. Let the end come, however cruel."

Reading those passages, it is easy to understand why Ozick declares, "The diary is not a genial document, despite its author's almost vividly satiric exposure of what she shrewdly saw as 'the comical side of hiding.' Its reputation for uplift is, to say it plainly, nonsensical." Ozick adds that the diary cannot be considered Anne's story in total because "A story may not be said to be a story if the end is missing. And because the end is missing, the story of Anne Frank in the fifty years since The Diary of a Young Girl was first published has been bowdlerized, distorted, transmuted, traduced, Americanized, homogenized, sentimentalized; falsified, kitschified, and, in fact, blatantly and arrogantly denied."

The story of Anne Frank ends with an emaciated girl dying at Bergen-Belsen, one victim out of the six million Jews the Nazis murdered. Ozick says that inspirational blurbs--such as the one calling the diary "a lasting testament to the indestructible nobility of the human spirit"--are "no more substantial than any other display of self-delusion. The success--the triumph--of Bergen-Belsen was precisely that it blotted out the possibility of courage, that it proved to be a lasting testament to the human spirit's easy destructibility. 'Hier ist kein Warum,' a guard at Auschwitz warned: here there is no 'why,' neither question nor answer, only the dark of unreason. Anne Frank's story, truthfully told, is unredeemed and unredeemable."

As Martin Amis put it in the Afterword to his novel Time's Arrow, "The National Socialists found the core of the reptile brain, and built an autobahn that went there." While the systematic, brutal efficiency of the Holocaust is unique, violence is a universal part of the human condition. It is unpleasant but important to note that American history is drenched in blood. In The Shocking Savagery of America’s Early History, Ron Rosenbaum summarizes historian Bernard Bailyn's book about the dark side of the pre-Colonial era:

Bailyn has not painted a pretty picture. Little wonder he calls it The Barbarous Years and spares us no details of the terror, desperation, degradation and widespread torture—do you really know what being "flayed alive" means? (The skin is torn from the face and head and the prisoner is disemboweled while still alive.) And yet somehow amid the merciless massacres were elements that gave birth to the rudiments of civilization—or in Bailyn's evocative phrase, the fragile "integument of civility"--that would evolve 100 years later into a virtual Renaissance culture, a bustling string of self-governing, self-sufficient, defiantly expansionist colonies alive with an increasingly sophisticated and literate political and intellectual culture that would coalesce into the rationale for the birth of American independence. All the while shaping, and sometimes misshaping, the American character. It's a grand drama in which the glimmers of enlightenment barely survive the savagery, what Yeats called "the blood-dimmed tide," the brutal establishment of slavery, the race wars with the original inhabitants that Bailyn is not afraid to call "genocidal," the full, horrifying details of which have virtually been erased.

It is remarkable that from such beginnings a society emerged in which Dr. King's strategy of non-violent non-cooperation proved to be effective--but it would be naive to state that such a strategy would have been effective in pre-Colonial America.

It cannot be emphasized enough that violence is not limited to one race, one society, or one culture. Violence is a fundamental human characteristic. For example, Joshua Hammer notes that Napoleon Chagnon discovered that violence is at the heart of Yamomamö culture:

Challenging Rousseau's romantic notion that man in his natural state is altruistic and peace-loving, Chagnon described the Yanomamö as a violent tribe whose males derive status--and women--from killing rivals. His groundbreaking 1968 work, Yanomamö: The Fierce People, sold one million copies, became a standard university text--and made him an outcast among anthropologists.

Chagnon based his findings on copious research. He traveled to dozens of remote Yanomamö villages, cultivated informers and interviewed killers. He asserted that the territory was in a chronic state of war. Tribal groups often abducted females from other villages, prompting acts of retaliation and nomohori, or "dastardly tricks," to lure rivals to their deaths. He also asserted that one-quarter of adult Yanomamö men were murdered by other Yanomamö, and that murderers were highly respected and produced more children than those who didn’t kill. "The whole purpose and design of the social structure of tribesmen," he writes in his memoir, "seems to have revolved around effectively controlling sexual access by males to nubile, reproductive-age females."

Chagnon's work is considered "politically incorrect" by some critics, and his conclusions have been savagely attacked, but his work has not been refuted scientifically; that does not prove that he is right--science correctly done is an ongoing search for truth, not a declaration of inviolable principles--but that means that someone will have to do some very thorough research to prove him wrong.

It is often suggested that human beings are the only species that engages in unprovoked violence against their own kind, but this is not true; dominant elephants bully other elephants:

Researchers often describe female elephants as living in "fission-fusion" societies. But the implication is that the fission dynamic--the forces pulling the groups apart--is passive, that somehow the optimal number of elephants that forage and survive together is achieved when extended families slowly develop looser connections and become more distantly associated.

I was now starting to realize that the dynamic might be active, possibly following the direct bloodline of the matriarch, where only the highest-ranking, or "queen," elephant and her direct descendants are welcome to hold court around the best water. Others are pushed away, forced to splinter off into separate groups.

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While violence is an intrinsic part of nature in general and human nature in particular, nature and human nature both also possess a tremendous capacity for compassion and resiliency. Hope for humanity's future must be based not on denying the facts described above, but rather on finding a way collectively to move forward in a manner that nurtures our best and most noble traits. One inspiring example is Jane Goodall's description of how a tree at Ground Zero survived the 9/11 attack:

Just over ten years after 9/11, on a cool, sunny April morning in 2012, I went to meet a Callery pear tree named Survivor. She had been placed in a planter near Building 5 of the World Trade Center in the 1970s and each year her delicate white blossoms had brought a touch of spring into a world of concrete. In 2001, after the 9/11 attack, this tree, like all the other trees that had been planted there, disappeared beneath the fallen towers.

But amazingly, in October, a cleanup worker found her, smashed and pinned between blocks of concrete. She was decapitated and the eight remaining feet of trunk were charred black; the roots were broken; and there was only one living branch.

The discovery was reported to Bram Gunther, who was then deputy director of central forestry for the New York City Parks Department, and when he arrived he initially thought the tree was unsalvageable. But the cleanup workers persuaded him to give the tree a chance, so he ordered that she be sent off to the Parks Department’s nursery in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx.

Ron Vega, now the director of design for the 9/11 Memorial site, was a cleanup worker back then. "A lot of people thought it was a wasted effort to try to rescue her," he recalled. "So she was taken out of the site almost clandestinely--under the cover of night."

Richie Cabo, the nursery manager, told me that when he first saw the decapitated tree he did not think anything could save her. But once the dead, burned tissues had been cut away, and her trimmed roots deeply planted in good rich soil, Survivor proved him wrong.

"In time," said Richie, "she took care of herself. We like to say she got tough from being in the Bronx."

In the spring of 2010 disaster struck Survivor again. Richie told me how he got news that the tree had been ripped out of the ground by a terrible storm that was raging outside, with 100 mile per hour winds. At once he rushed there with his three young children. They found the roots completely exposed, and he and the children and the other nursery staff worked together to try to rescue her.

At first they only partially lifted the tree, packing in compost and mulch so as not to break the roots. For a long while they gently sprayed the tree with water to minimize the shock, hoping she'd make it. A few weeks later they set to work to get Survivor completely upright.

"It was not a simple operation," Richie told me. "She was 30 feet tall, and it took a heavy-duty boom truck to do the job."

Again, Survivor survived.

It wasn't until six years after Ron Vega witnessed the mangled tree being rescued from the wreckage that he heard Survivor was still alive. Immediately he decided to incorporate her into the memorial design--and with his new position he was able to make it happen. She was planted near the footprint of the South Tower. "For personal accomplishments," Ron said, "today is it. I could crawl into this little bed and die right there. That's it. I'm done....To give this tree a chance to be part of this memorial. It doesn’t get any better than that."

As we walked toward this special tree, I felt as much in awe as though I were going to meet a great spiritual leader or shaman. We stood together outside the protective railing. We reached out to gently touch the ends of her branches. Many of us--perhaps all--had tears in our eyes.

As Survivor stood proudly upright in her new home, a reporter said to Richie, "This must be an extra-special day for you, considering it’s the ten-year anniversary of the day you were shot."

Before he started working at the Bronx nursery in the spring of 2001, Richie had been a corrections officer at Green Haven maximum-security prison in New York. He left the job after nearly dying from a terrible gunshot wound in the stomach, inflicted not at the prison, but out on the streets when he tried to stop a robbery in progress.

Until the reporter pointed it out, Richie hadn't even realized the date was the same. He told me that he couldn't speak for a moment. "I could hardly even breathe," he said. And he thought it was probably more than coincidence--that the tree would go home on that special day. "We are both survivors," he said.

While overseeing the design, Ron made sure that the tree was planted so that the traumatized side faces the public. Some people, Ron told us, weren't pleased to have the tree back, saying that she "spoiled" the symmetry of the landscaping, as she is a different species from the other nearby trees. Indeed, she is different. On the tenth anniversary of 9/11, when the memorial site was opened to survivors and family members, many of them tied blue ribbons onto Survivor's branches.

One last memory. Survivor should have been in full bloom in April when I met her. But, like so many trees in this time of climate change, she had flowered about two weeks early. Just before we left, as I walked around this brave tree one last time, I suddenly saw a tiny cluster of white flowers. Just three of them, but somehow it was like a sign. It reminded me of a story I read in a newspaper. In the aftermath of the horrifying tsunami and Fukushima nuclear plant disaster in Japan, a TV crew went to document the situation. They interviewed a man who had just lost everything, not only his house and all his belongings, but his family also. The reporter asked him if he had any hope.

He turned and pointed to a cherry tree beginning to bloom. "Look there," he said, pointing toward the new blossoms. "That's what gives me hope."

Holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel observed the whole gamut of human behavior, and wrestled with how to not give up hope after processing so much suffering. Here is a quote from his book Open Heart:

"I belong to a generation that has often felt abandoned by God and betrayed by mankind. And yet, I believe that we must not give up on either...We must choose between the violence of adults and the smiles of children, between the ugliness of hate and the will to oppose it."

In another passage, Wiesel says that if he ever meets God face to face and can ask just one question he will simply ask, "Why?"

That is a profound meditation. Why does the universe even exist? Why does life of any kind exist? Why do people exist? Why is there so much suffering? Asking "Why?" without being specific means asking all of those things and more. Whether or not one believes in God does not change the profundity of this question.

Many religious people believe that such a question cannot be answered in this life on this planet by the human mind. Answers, they believe, await us in heaven. Yet, upon reflection, that point of view is not entirely satisfactory or comforting. James Woods' article "Holiday in Hellmouth" appears in the June 9/June 16, 2008 New Yorker. Woods writes:

Heaven, one of the tenderest verses in the Bible has it, is where God will wipe away all tears from our faces...In the end, it seems, Heaven is the only tenable response to the problem of evil. It is where God's mysterious plan will be revealed; it is where the poor and the downtrodden, the sick and the tortured, will be healed; it is where everything that we went through on earth will suddenly seem "worth it."

But Heaven is also a problem for theodicists who take the freedom to choose between good and evil as paramount. For Heaven must be a place where either our freedom to sin has been abolished or we have been so transfigured that we no longer want to sin: in Heaven, our will miraculously coincides with God's will. And here the free-will defense unravels, and is unravelled by the very idea of Heaven. If Heaven obviates the great human freedom to sin, why was it ever such a momentous ideal on earth, "worth" all that pain and suffering?

The difficulty can be recast in terms of the continuity of self. If we will be so differently constituted in Heaven as to be strangers to sin, then no meaningful connection will exist between the person who suffers here and the exalted soul who will enjoy the great system of rewards and promises and tears wiped from faces: our faces there will not be the faces we have here...

Heaven--because it comes next and is not now--is, as so often in religious thought, a solution that merely creates another problem. If God supposedly wipes away all tears in Heaven, why does he not do it now? Why does God not now establish paradise on earth, as the Jehovah's Witnesses believe he will do? And what is the purpose of these eighty or so years we spend on earth not having the tears wiped from our faces?

Maybe the answer will be revealed in heaven, but on this Earth when one is confronted by evil I would rather be the Hebrew slave saved by Moses than be Anne Frank praised by Gandhi. More to the point, any of us who has the opportunity to be Moses should embrace the chance to help someone who is powerless.

The Paradox of Time and Memory

I am older than John Lennon or Kobe Bryant will ever be. Lennon was 40 when he was shot to death in front of his apartment building in 1980; Bryant was 41 when he died in a helicopter crash earlier this year. They are gone too soon, but also forever young.

You don't feel the passage of time until it slaps you in the face. Watching the first two episodes of ESPN's "The Last Dance," I realized that most college students today were not even born when the events depicted in the film took place. That time when the Chicago Bulls won six NBA titles during an eight year span felt so exciting, so vibrant, so electric--but it is history to today's young adults, much like the Beatles or the Boston Celtics' 1960s dynasty are history to me and to members of my generation.

Someone who watched John Lennon and the other Beatles during the 1960s did not think of Lennon at that time as a tragic figure whose life would be cut short--but members of my generation had barely learned who he was before he died, and thus the international outpouring of grief that followed his death is inextricably connected to my thoughts and memories about his life. As a child, I was struck by the cruelty of Lennon being killed in the prime of his life shortly after he had released an upbeat song titled "(Just Like) Starting Over." I knew that Lennon had been in the Beatles, and I had some idea of who the Beatles were, but I didn't feel the Beatles the way that I would later feel Prince. Put another way, I did not have the illusion of knowing the Beatles the way that I had the illusion of knowing Prince; after all, Prince--through his songs--accompanied me in real time through a wide variety of life experiences spanning over 30 years.

I lived through the Kobe Bryant era, even participated in it as a writer/interviewer, so when I think of Bryant I think of the best player of the post-Michael Jordan era--the player who came closest to matching up with Jordan (you can disagree with that assessment, but that does not change the way that I personally experienced that era). Interviewing him in Cleveland, or in Indianapolis, or during NBA All-Star Weekend, I could never have imagined that he would be frozen in time as forever young--but children now, and children yet to be born, will perceive Bryant not as a living person, but as a historical figure who died young, like Dr. King and John Lennon. Dying young is an inescapable part of their legacy.

You can learn history, but no matter how much you know, no matter how empathetic you are, no matter how sensitive you are, it is difficult to feel history the way that you feel the life you live, the events that impact you in real time. Every time I hear Dr. Martin Luther King's famous "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech I cry, but those are tears spilled because I already know how the story turns out; if I had heard that speech when he gave it, I would have felt inspired instead of tearful--and if I had been alive when he was assassinated, the immediate, visceral feeling of loss would be different than the feeling one gets from learning about Dr. King's life, and finding out for the first time how he died.

Dr. King had a vision that he might not be destined to have a long life, and he shared that vision with his followers in "I've Been to the Mountaintop." Lennon had no visions of personal martyrdom; in fact, he sought to avoid that fate, once telling an interviewer, "It's hard to be Gandhi or Martin Luther King or to follow them. I don't admire politicians particularly, I think they're showbiz people, but people who put their thing on the line, like Gandhi, and threw the British out by not shooting anybody...those are the political people I admire. But I don't want to be shot for it like Gandhi, and I don't want to be shot for it like Martin Luther King. I don't want to be a martyr. I don't believe in martyrs, but I admire their stance." Those words sounded one way to a listener in real time, but they sound different when you read them after Lennon was shot--just 12 years after Dr. King was assassinated.

Lennon also said, "If I'd conveniently died in the mid-70s after the Rock 'n' Roll album or Walls and Bridges, they'd all be writing this worshipful stuff about what a great guy and wasn't he funny with a Tampax on his head [during Lennon's infamous "Lost Weekend" period]. You know, all that stuff, it's all right when you're dead. They'd all be saying, what a great guy, and wonderful, wonderful. But I didn't die, so that infuriated everybody, that I would live and do what I want to do. Which is look after me and the family--that was the central concern--to be a family and not lose that was more important than the creation and records and rock 'n' roll and being in Billboard."

Lennon was dead two months after he uttered those words, leaving behind his widow Yoko Ono, their five year old son Sean, and his 17 year old son Julian (from a previous marriage).

Lennon appreciated the past, and his past, but he did not find it productive to wallow in nostalgia:

The adults that were the 20-year-olds in the 60s have all turned into what we were supposed to saving ourselves from: asking for the 60s to come back with the Beatles and the Kennedys--they probably even want a war so's we can have an anti-war movement...We don't need the 60s and we don't need the Beatles we don't need the Kennedys. Let's leave them where they are, in a nice memory...I don't hate the 60s--I have great memories. When the 60s music comes on the radio I enjoy it. Same thing when the 50s music comes on--it takes me back to being 15, [the] 60s takes me back to being 20, the 70s take me back to being 30, and the 80s are going to take me back to being 40. But nostalgia is fine on Sunday, not every day of the week.

Michael Jordan does not seem like a nostalgic person--he has too much confidence in what he can do right now to spend much time dwelling on what he did in the past--but it is interesting that "The Last Dance" footage languished in the proverbial vault for two decades before Jordan gave his approval for the film to be made and to be publicly distributed. Jordan embraces living in the moment, but at some level he is also thinking about how he will be remembered--and possibly controlling that, to the extent that he can control it. Of course, Jordan has every right to shape how his story is told, and I agree with Sam Smith that it is great to hear from Jordan talking about the past after so many authors--including Smith--provided their takes on Jordan's career.

I often think about the "Wiseguy" episode "How Will They Remember Me?"--and it is hard to believe that the episode first aired over 30 years ago! Vinny Terranova found his father's old journal, and reading his father's thoughts long after his father had passed away brought to the surface a full range of emotions for Vinny about his childhood, his relationship with his father, and his current occupation as a government agent tasked with infiltrating the mafia. Vinny's father desperately wanted to leave something behind for Vinny to remember him by, he wanted Vinny to be proud of him, and he wanted to control how he would be remembered--but we cannot control how we will be remembered, or if we will be remembered at all. If Dr. Martin Luther King, John Lennon, Prince, or Kobe Bryant had died at a much younger age--before they became famous--none of them would be remembered at all (from a historical standpoint), but if they had lived to be 80 or 90 then each would almost certainly be remembered differently, because they would have become elder statesmen in their fields instead of icons who are forever young. Would the passing of time change them, or change us?

That is the paradox of time and memory.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Mountaintop Speech

As we celebrate the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. today, we remember what an eloquent and powerful orator he was. His speeches tingle the spine, elevate one's thoughts and touch one's heart. While "I Have a Dream" is probably his most famous speech, Dr. King's "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech--delivered the day before he was assassinated--synthesized history, prophecy and a call to action in a striking manner. Dr. King's passionate belief in the power of non-violence to effect social change gave him the faith and courage to state that his people would reach the Promised Land even if his life were cut short. 

Dr. King declared that if he had been blessed with the choice of living at any time in recorded history he would have chosen this very moment:

Strangely enough, I would turn to the Almighty, and say, "If you allow me to live just a few years in the second half of the twentieth century I will be happy." 

Now that's a strange statement to make, because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land; confusion all around. That's a strange statement. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century in a way that men, in some strange way, are responding.

Dr. King concluded with this breathtaking statement of his faith and courage:

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!

And so I'm happy, tonight.

I'm not worried about anything.

I'm not fearing any man!

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!!

Cloud Atlas Explores Our Interconnected Lives and Destinies

"All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be."--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Cloud Atlas explores a theme stated by the character Sonmi-451, who declares, "Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present. And by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future." This is an alluring, attractive and yet frightening concept: it is tempting and comforting to believe that every soul is inextricably bound together, that we are not alone and that a better future can be created by each act of kindness--but it is distressing and frightening to think that perhaps individual free will is constrained by a larger plan and that this larger plan permits (or even specifically includes) evil actions that cause much suffering.

The film tells six parallel narratives set in six different locales/time frames:

1) South Pacific Ocean, 1849
2) England/Scotland, 1936
3) San Francisco, 1973
4) United Kingdom, 2012
5) Neo Seoul, Korea, 2141
6) Hawaiian Islands, 2321 (post-apocalyptic Earth)

Cloud Atlas' journey from a primitive (by 2012 standards) 1849 setting to an advanced (by 2012 standards) 2141 setting culminating in a very primitive (by any standard) post-apocalyptic setting where a horde of cannibals terrorizes a peaceful settlement brings to mind an Albert Einstein quote: "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." Cloud Atlas never explicitly examines this point but strongly implies that the degenerate nature of the 2141 society resulted in a war, revolution or some other kind of general social upheaval that quite literally brought the world back into the Stone Age.

The quest for freedom--on both an individual level and on a larger level in terms of freedom from mass suffering/oppression--is the driving force in each Cloud Atlas storyline. In the 1849 setting, one character scoffs at the notion of freeing a slave, saying that the would-be emancipator is taking an action that is the equivalent of removing one drop from an ocean and that this action could have dire consequences (ranging from social ostracism to death by lynching) while not making any real difference. The skeptic received the unhesitating reply that the ocean consists of nothing more than drops of water. Similarly, in the 2141 setting, Sonmi-451 is interrogated shortly before being executed. The interrogator asks her what difference her ideas about freedom could possibly make if no one ever hears them or believes them. She calmly replies that at least one person has already heard her (meaning the interrogator).
 
Is it really true that if you remove (or add) enough drops of water that you can reshape society, that one person can significantly change the world? Or is the cynic right that anyone who tries to do so will meet a horrible fate without making a meaningful difference? There have always been brave, visionary leaders willing to risk their lives for the sake of that "one drop" but those leaders frequently suffer immensely--and often make the ultimate sacrifice. Have their sacrifices made the world better or are the trappings of our "civilization" just a thin veneer draped over our true barbaric nature? I fear that Einstein was right and that we are just one war away from heading right back to the Stone Age; our technological capabilities are increasing much faster than our capacity to function on a high moral/ethical level: as Martin Amis put it in Time's Arrow, "[The Holocaust] was unique, not in its cruelty, nor in its cowardice, but in its style--in its combination of the atavistic and the modern. It was, at once, reptilian and 'logistical.' And although the offence was not definingly German, its style was. The National Socialists found the core of the reptile brain, and built an autobahn that went there."

Whether or not reincarnation literally exists as depicted in Cloud Atlas, Dr. King is right that all of humanity is intimately connected--but it is far from clear if we will collectively understand that concept and act accordingly or if we will soon be fighting World War IV with sticks and stones.