summum bonum

My book,” says Skinner, ”is an effort to demonstrate how things go bad when you make a fetish out of individual freedom and dignity. If you insist that individual rights are the summum bonum, then the whole structure of society falls down.”

- Time Magazine, 1971

http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/07/07/extinction-burst/

The Surreal

Certain moments of my life stand out beyond easy description. Moments of joy, sorrow, beauty, dispair. The day Peter & I decided to marry. The day I decided to get divorced. The view from the top of the Grand Tetons. The view from the central court yard at Dachau.

During our last visit to Germany, we spent some tourist-time in Berlin. It was a pleasant opportunity for our friends to see things they normally wouldn’t (Pergamon Museum) or or hadn’t (Hohenschönhausen).

This last location is a notorious Stasi prison. It was the one location where I didn’t feel as though I was imposing my tourist wishes, since none of our group had been there before. It had recently opened to the public. This is like Dick Chayney’s house: it was never put on any maps, and no one publically acknowledged it. Yet - if the Stasi took you away in the middle of the night ... this is where you’d arrive.

At the time, Michael was 3-1/2 and Gregor was 6 months old. About 10 minutes into the tour (conducted in German), Michael couldn’t keep still. This isn’t Neuschwannstein, where my tolerance for pediatric noise would have been much higher.

So, I was the obvious choice (not my country's heritage; heavy Berlin accent) to depart with the boys. I apologized to the tour guide, and left.

Surreal point #1: walking through an infamous Stasi prison alone. Hoping I wouldn’t get lost on the way back to the entrance. My 2 small children were the only sound. I even stopped and listened ... not a sound.

I took the boys out to the visitor’s center to wait for our friends & Peter.

It was a broiling 90-95 degrees, humid, and painfully bright sunshine. There was no water (Germany=no water fountains). Every single thing in the visitor center/shop was in German (no English=no distraction). Michael wanted water. Michael wanted food. Michael wanted Papa. Gregor wanted to eat; that at least I could accommodate.

The center of the prison was this sun-parched area with not a single living thing, other than my children & me. It was 15 minutes past when I expected our group. It was 20 minutes past.

What should I do? my mind wailed. I was bored out of my skull. There was nothing to do. I was physically miserable. I was sitting in the middle of some god-awful prison. I couldn't get out since I had no car keys. I was sitting in the middle of a gigantic memorial to human misery.

It really is difficult to keep in mind the suffering of others when you're miserable yourself. Afterall, my family knew where I was; no one was going to take me back into the cells and torture me; I wasn't worried about dying. It wasn't surreal, but it was an unpleasant personal epiphany that I couldn't put aside my own discomfort, comparing it to the suffering of others. I'd like to think I could have, if confronted with the reality of it in front of my face. I'd like to ...

All Michael wanted was to run around and play.

I’m not German. I’m a tourist. This can't possibly have the emotional impact for me that it might have for my husband and friends. God help me, I’m an American tourist; not a group generally renowned for its cultural sensitivity. How could I explain to a 3 year old that this was an important part of his history as a German? (This was the first time I ever sincerely considered the fact that my child is also not-American.)

I was so bored and trying to be respectful of this place that is really serious. I finally lost my mind & told Michael that he was welcome to run around all he wanted, as long as I could see him. It's not as if he could have hidden in that wasteland of broiling sunshine. I decided that if anyone complained about it, I would inform them in no uncertain terms that they would just have to put up with it until the tour was over. As part of this plan, I decided to keep open the option of breaking down into tears. It worked once with Lufthansa staff in Frankfurt.

Finally Michael was happy; hot, but happy. Gregor was asleep. I was sitting on the steps inside a prison and wishing it was under 80 degrees.

The small building sitting in the interior of the prison opened, and an older man stepped out. As he strode across the courtyard toward me, I braced myself. He looked at Michael and offered a very paternal smile. He asked if Michael was bored, offering his sympathy when I said we were waiting for my husband & the tour. He smiled again as he passed by.

Surreal point #2: Sitting inside a Stasi interrogation/detention prison watching my 3 year old son running around laughing in total enjoyment on a sunny Summer afternoon.

Liberty or scrap metal?

The Author's blog about her novel asks in passing: Would Americans ever want security and economic stability more than democracy and freedom?

hell, yes! Look at what we did to ourselves in 2000. And far more in 2004. The US government ran for 5 or 6 years on nothing but screaming fear of our security. (Admittedly, even today few seem to give a goddamn about our economic stability, which is likely far more critical to her novel's view of the future ... this being defined as the willingness to educate themselves about what the gov't is doing with their money, and scream about it).

Even today, the right-wing of the Republican party is harping on keeping out the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.* Tear down the big copper bitch, if we can't bother to respect her. At the rate copper is going, it might even make a microscopic dent in the national debt. Or sell it, like bits of the Berlin Wall, and make a more significant dent in the debt. I doubt any of the unmentionables on Wall Street would give a damn.
(the Wikipedia entry on it is pretty interesting, especially the Aftermath of 9/11 section)

Far, far too many Americans ponied up to the Fear-Я-Us campaigns. It was like watching the Deep South in '64 facing the potential of actually having the government enforce equal rights for all those 'pesky niggers'. Protect our sacred rights to racial purity! Let them into our schools and they'll be impregnating our daughters and stealing our jobs! They'll destroy Our America! Or was that Mexicans? Or Arabs? Or the Irish?

Who's kidding who?

We happily embrace limitations of our freedoms without blinking! The government is still legally allowed to tap our phones, grossly impede commerce/travel with TSA, obscenely violate our legal rights of a speedy trial, or even reasonable suspicion. God forbid any of these ignorant voting idiots actually know what the phrase habeas corpus means.** Did anyone bother to read the PATRIOT Act? Even legislators afterwards admitted they didn't! Has anyone got the brass balls necessary to revoke it? No. Why? Because politicians are too afraid of scaring off the votes of the Fearful, who happily accept those limitations. Hence does fear make cowards of us all.

Even with a change of governmental figurehead, the government doesn't bother to revoke the acts made in initial panic. They pander to the fearful, rather than do anything to educate them into some sort of recognition of reality.





** The Habeas Corpus Acts "declare no principle and define no rights, but they are for practical purposes worth a hundred constitutional articles guaranteeing individual liberty." ~ A.V. Dicey, specifically it is a summons with the force of a court order addressed to the custodian (such as a prison official) demanding that a prisoner be brought before the court, together with proof of authority, allowing the court to then determine whether that custodian has lawful authority to hold that person

*The inscription on the base of the statue originally named Liberty Enlightening the World reads:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land; [i.e., the Collosus of Rhodes]
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles.

From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips.

"Give me your tired,

your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

admittedly, I'm sure the 'wretched refuse of your teeming shore wasn't intended to mean Manhattan's garbage scows