So far this millennium has packed a sprightly pace of events into the opening months (I choose to begin it with this year and not the next, as do some of the purists who are out of step with public perception, which is, after all, the only meaningful measure to something that is an artifice of convenience for humanity alone). Perhaps it is primarily because of the irritant of a presidential election year, but I cannot remember so many remarkable changes in such a short time, even allowing for the fall of the Soviet Union a decade ago.
Days ago Israel unilaterally pulled out of Lebanon, precipitating a collapse of the Christian militia there and bringing taunting Hezbollah fighters right to the border fences. The lingering war between Ethiopia and breakaway Eritrea suddenly seems to be near settlement. Farther south the implosion of Sierra Leone has sucked in United Nations troops and concerned internationalists with the implications for spreading anarchy (and yes, anarchists seem to have reappeared here in North America with nihilistic notions). Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe has incited retribution against White farmers and sent jitters throughout South Africa. In Sri Lanka the Tamil Tiger insurgency has cut off an entire area of the country and now threatens the government. Western peace negotiators fled the Solomon Islands under a hail of gunfire. In Fiji ethnic Fijians still hold their prime minister, an ethnic Indian, hostage . . . But why go on? This is already a proven time of change and upheaval!
How to make sense of it. Someone once observed that while history does not repeat itself, it does rhyme. Clearly the past is a good guide; often a salutary warning in dealing with the present. Human nature being what it is, there are clear patterns that will repeat in similar circumstances.
I just returned from a week in Guatemala, Central America. Over the years I have been there about a dozen times and have seen it change from a rather ominous military dictatorship battling insurgency in a brutal way to a palpably free and more secure society. The benefits of that change are obvious in the way that people now feel free to voice political dissent, in the building boom, the business expansion, the sight of indigenous Indian children enjoying a water park alongside families of the oligarchy.
But some things remain. There is fear of violence. Guards stand out front of any major business and wealthy residence with pistol-grip short shotguns at the ready.
Some years ago, in the midst of the guerrilla war and right-wing death squads, a dictator named General Efraín Ríos Montt came to power with the promise of ending the conflict. In spite of his ardent evangelical faith (one hopes not because of it) Ríos Montt quickly created a brutal scorched earth policy toward the Mayan Indians he believed were aiding the rebels. Villagers were destroyed and people routinely lined up against the wall and shot. It is a testimony to the inherently civil nature of the traumatized people of Guatemala that they removed him, and without violence.
Incredibly, this general has made a political comeback, now heading a major faction in the parliament. And as people worry about escalating crime his appeal as a tough law-and-order candidate is growing. Incredible! One lesson of history that seems to have failed to take in public memory.
Back in the United States at the Miami airport I picked up a copy of the Miami Herald. And a certain sense of déjà vu. One front-page story told of three DOT police officers disciplined for purchasing assault rifles to use in off-duty traffic assignments. Early shades of right-wing paramilitary and death-squad justice perhaps.
Another front-page story was titled "Battling for Vouchers From Brickell Avenue." It told the tale of Patrick Heffernan, a onetime seminarian and church school official who "sees himself as David fending off the Goliath of public schools" and is taking action as founder of the state's largest pro voucher group, Floridians for School Choice.
In the words of Sabrina Walters, the Herald reporter, "his is a story of what happens when a civic organizer's politics happen to align with those of the influential and the wealthy-people with a willingness to give money and who seemingly have an endless supply of it." The voucher issue has gathered quite a head of steam this election season, after Milwaukee and Cleveland school districts approved the publicly funded private school vouchers. It is sure to be a major campaign issue, with Republican governor George W. Bush strongly pro-voucher, and so far Vice President Gore very much opposed. (Interestingly, a recent fund-raising letter from the Hillary Clinton for New York senator campaign is quite forthright in her opposition to school vouchers.)
"Critics," according to the article, "contend Heffernan is part of a bigger right-wing crusade seeking to undermine public schools and divert state funds to private, religious-based schools." One of his critics is Howard Simon, president of the American Civil Liberties Union. "To steer children into parochial schools is constitutionally impermissible," he says.
Perhaps it was the juxtaposition of my trip to what once was called a banana republic, and all the right-wing abuses implied by the history of such systems, that colored my reading of the Miami headlines. Perhaps it was just a series of recollections from my history studies. But I don't think a get-tough freelance paramilitary approach will work any better here than in Guatemala or Kosovo. And I do think that the voucher movement, while clearly toying with constitutional constraints, is also a disturbing attempt by a privileged class to use the government for its benefit and the public school system be damned-another step toward an oligarchy in my heavy-handed interpretation of historic tendencies. Quite apart from the fact that it will also tend to institutionalize the power of one or more major churches and create a very unholy union of church and state. And the history of such in Latin America is chilling. Let's not go down that path-ever.
I started off my comments with a patchwork reporting of a world in flux to show the revolutionary times we live in. Don't think for one moment that I'd forget to mention the United States. I think it self-evident that it faces its greatest challenge since its founding and the cold war. It's not proper for Liberty to take politically partisan positions: but without fear of that I can say that in the past few months we have seen what is obviously either a sinister and vicious creeping coup d'état, perhaps by a "vast right-wing conspiracy," or the exposure of the most corrupt, manipulative, lawless administration ever. God help us if both of these are true.
God help us to maintain a decent and fair society. God help us to learn the lessons of history-and not just of our own country. God help us to uphold the constitutional liberties so clearly established by people in awe of past mistakes. By people determined not to repeat the horrors of past ages.
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