Philosophy

I spent many years as that most rare breed of creature. I was a pro-choice, anti-capital punishment, pro-gay rights, left-leaning, registered Democrat, living in Texas. My home state is home to some of the most Republican people I know, most of whom, to oftentimes my simultaneous amusement and annoyance, are in my family.

I have spent countless family get togethers, listening to my older brother Tom spout his own brand of philosophy, and I find myself often agreeing with him. When he told my mother he was pro-choice because he did not want his tax money to go towards supporting all the abandoned children of drug addicted mothers who could not get an abortion, if Roe v. Wade was appealed, I was delighted in his logic, and I’ve used that same argument myself, in discussing abortion. Through years of watching the news, reading everything I could get my hands on, people-watching, and a few degrees from the University of Hard Knocks and Cold Snubs, I’ve developed my own brand of twisted logic. It’s closer to Socrates, than Augustine of Hippo, but that is probably the inner pagan in me speaking.

But this week, I decided to practice what I preach, and walk in someone else’s shoes. My ideological opposite is probably a conservative Republican, so I decided to follow in their wake for a few days. And I have a few thoughts about it…

I can’t stand Bill O’Reilly. He’s not a journalist, he’s a loud mouth bully, using his show as a bullhorn to broadcast his particular brand of beliefs, none of which I could force myself to swallow, to the American public. The fact that his ratings are soaring right now frightens me.

I don’t like Sarah Palin either. She’s a woman, and that’s about all I have in common with her. And I could write pages and pages of hopefully intelligent, inspired ranting about her, but I’m stopping now.

But what I disliked most, during my foray into the foreign world of Republicanism, is their tendency to fall back on war. If you don’t like what someone is doing, just send in the Army, they’ll deal with it. (I’m paraphrasing greatly here.) But they go to war as a means of solving problems too easily. I still have the words of the Battalion Cmdr ringing in my ears, about how there are people who will hurt the man I married, and me, because what we believe. And that scares me. But I am aware, as Carl trains in ways to kill those hateful people, that for every one that dies, we, the world, lose a human soul.

Haji, as I’ve been recently taught to call them, are real people. They have their own wants, needs, beliefs, goals, families, that long list of things that we list when we call ourselves human, our enemies have those too. The founder fathers of this country believed that God gave us the right to live, above all the other rights, and I do not think God meant that for just a small group of rebellious English colonists who did not like the heavy tax system placed on them by mother England. I think God meant for all of us to live, as we all would.

So I am less likely to scream for blood, to yell “Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war”*, than my conservative counter parts. And this past week, I learned that there is a careful balance, one I admittedly haven’t found just perfectly yet, between protecting myself, my family, and my country, and the overwhelming need to stomp the crap out of someone who threatens any of those three.

The God I see, the one I found in the pages of the Bible, which I can still recite from, much to my shock, wanted us to love each other, wanted us to be kind to each other, to take care of the poor, the sick, the needy. That God, and I’m presuming to talk for God here, knows the cost of war, sees it every day, and mourns the loss of each life that falls.

It was the lack of acknowledgement, for even a second, amongst the Republicans I watched, of the lives being lost, innocent and otherwise, that bothered me the most. While they rant and rave about the enemies to America, and yes, there are plenty of them, never once did I hear one talk about the cost of lives war takes.

And this belief, in the sanctity of life, also pushes me to be more diplomatic now, because it is my husband, the father of my future children, the man I fall asleep listening to snore, and wake up with his feet on my side of the bed, that will be fighting that war. It is a human life around whom my life is mixed, that stands to fall as a casualty to war. I feel the greater weight of war now as an Army wife, than I ever did as a bleeding heart intellectual liberal. (It was my father who called me that, and I’m fairly certain he meant it as an insult, and wasn’t happy when I thanked him for the compliment).

Do the Republicans of the world, when they scream for more blood to be spilled, not understand that is my husband they are sending off to war? Does thinking of him in terms of a number, of just his rank and job description, make it easier? Does the thought of losing him, and all the other husbands and wives of the military, not weigh on them when they make the decision to vote yes, we go to war?

All of this said… I fully expect Carl to do his job, to the best of his ability, when he goes to Iraq. I am doing my level best to make peace with the fact that his job, entails killing people. The loss of life staggers me, and nearly brings me to tears. But that’s his job, and that’s what I married into, and I must make my own peace with it, before it drives me crazy.

War does not determine who is right - only who is left**

~Jennifer

*Julius Cesar, by William Shakespeare
**Betrand Russell