INSTEAD OF A HOLLYWOOD ENDING

(This is the final installment of my 2006 piece on "Global Security.")

Above was only a partial list of challenges to a successful implementation of the idea of Global Security, if such an idea is implementable at all. But isn’t America “the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave,” and the buck presumably stops with her? Isn’t she free enough to think with her own head, and brave enough to look into her own soul?
There is a lot to be said for optimism when it comes to the last segment. Take the original movie classic The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, for instance. Wasn’t it supposed to end depressingly, on a busy highway, where our truth-screaming hero, looking like a madman and probably on the verge of a total collapse, is hopelessly trying to stop the traffic... But the wise men of Hollywood insisted on a happy ending, and they got one, to be sure…
So, here is mine.

I will never say that this nation is beyond redemption. She does have lots of knowledgeable, well-educated, perceptive individuals, and eminently qualified scholars, to educate the general public, and especially those who desperately need such education: American political leaders. But the voices of wisdom are drowning, while folly prospers. The reason may well be that the government by the people has become a government possessed by an ideology.
It is always dangerous to allow ideologues of any persuasion to decide national policy. By definition, an ideologue, rather than serving his Nation, becomes a promoter of his ideology. Most of us know that only the Word of God is sacred and perfect, and because all ideologies are man-made, therefore, they are neither sacred nor perfect. Reliance on a rigid ideology, rather than on basic common sense, deprives this nation of flexibility in responding to the challenges of a changing world. Even worse, it allows her clever enemies to study the vulnerabilities of this very flawed ideology, and to manipulate events in such a manner that would expose her weakness in the most unfavorable way. In other words, her enemy gets an opportunity to control her through her unsound predictability.

Unless America is emancipated from her ideological shackles, unless she reemerges as a healthy nation with good judgment and common sense, unless her public debate becomes genuinely free (no forbidden subjects and other political taboos!) and meaningful again, allowing all voices of reason and good will to be heard, “Global Security” will remain nothing more than an object of wishful and wistful thinking.

(Written in July 2006.)