MONTREAL SERAI EDITORIAL
THE INHERENT ARBITRARINESS
OF POLITICAL SYSTEMS
The most meaningful moments of European and American history of the last 300 hundred years consist of the hundreds of thousands of individual stories of soldiers and civilians who have died in the name of freedom. The number is so tragically large, we automatically assume the desire for freedom, in and of itself, is a rational striving that need not be questioned, that it passes muster both morally and teleologically because we want it as much for others as for ourselves. But can we rationally demonstrate that a system premised on freedom is more desirable or superior to belief systems that subscribe to the opposite view? No, because politics -- or who gets what, where and when -- isn't a science.
Saddam
Hussein and the Taliban, to mention a few, (and that would include the pre-revolutionary
Royals in England and France), believe that their country's goals are more
likely to be achieved if their people are not free. Their interpretation of
history bids them to conclude the category of freedom is a dangerously open
proposition, and should be suppressed for the good of the whole.
In terms of reciprocal deprecation and demonization, the symmetry is eerie: Westerners view them as backwards and oppressed, they view the West as godless and doomed to perdition in a system where one's place in society is determined by purchasing power.
So if both sides are wanting in absolute proof, what can we say for certain about freedom? Only that every person longs to be free, but that being free is not necessarily a desirable, (healthy) end either individually or politically.
Make
no mistake here. I enjoy my freedoms as much as the next man or woman. And
I am truly humbled and infinitely grateful towards the hundreds of thousands
of nameless soldiers who have sacrificed their lives for the freedoms I (we)
all enjoy. However, in the absence of proof, we must allow for the fact that
one system of belief is no more or less rational/valid than the other; each
has its adherents and has survived the test of time; and each a must allow
that the other, in the course of time, might be proven right. By corollary,
there is absolutely no justification for one system to interfere, vilify,
undermine, subvert or overthrow the other because it doesn't share its political
and/or philosophical assumptions. The very system of belief we denounce now,
may be the same one we sing the praises of in the future.
THE END