A Comment on this Week’s Columns: The Pacifist and the Urban Warrior

It seems fitting to comment on the two columns we have posted this week, since they are not our usual fare.  Adele Wick’s piece quotes extensively from the Nobel-Prize-winning British Earl, writer, philosopher, mathematician and pacifist, Bertrand Russell.  The second article is by Nadra Enzi, a.k.a. “Captain Black.”  (“B.L.A.C.K” stands for “Brotherhood, Loyalty, Ability, Courage and Kindness”).  Mr. Enzi specializes in urban security and also works with at-risk inner-city kids.     Nadra Enzi and Bertrand Russell and the worlds they live(d) in could not be more different.  But each has a related and contrasting message.

As the Cold War seemed to spin out of control, Bertrand Russell grew increasingly alarmed.  He understood sooner than most people the truly massive destructive potential of nuclear weapons.  Russell trembled at the thought of something so terrible as nuclear annihilation.  He was prepared to compromise the sovereignty of free nations, including his own, in order avoid what he believed was an otherwise inevitable nuclear holocaust.    Russell’s fear made him willing to enter into a world government and thus partner with the Soviet Union, whose leader Joseph Stalin had just died of old age after a career of committing genocide against his own people.   Stalin murdered 30 million Soviet citizens.  Russell nevertheless insisted that “paradise” was open to humanity, if only we could rid ourselves of weapons that risked “universal death.”

Here, Mr. Enzi, a man of the streets, would have something to teach the Nobel Laureat, Russell.  Enzi writes,  ”Servants and cowards offer themselves as doormats for life’s endless supply of would-be bullies.”  Indeed, evil men will not listen to reason, but as brutes themselves, they understand brute force.  The world will never be improved by well-meaning but ultimately misguided attempts at sweeping top-down change.  Instead, the human character must be developed one person at a time.  This is what Enzi, as Captain Black, is apparently trying to do in the hard inner-city world that he inhabits.  We should wish him well.

Russell’s radical idea is pacifism.  Enzi’s radical idea – which was once not so radical – is that a true test of character involves a willingness to personally and physically fight for justice.   In Europe,  Russell’s ideology is winning the day.  Europeans mostly depend on the United States for their  own defense.  Their feeble militaries could not have stopped the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo during the 1990s without American help.   Today German “soldiers” will only serve in safe parts of Afghanistan where they will not see combat.  Having experienced so many wars, Europeans  now seem ready to surrender to the next aggressor, whether he leads an army across the border or lurks in an alley waiting for a passerby.

I know from a number of family stories not to expect any help from French citizens if one is accosted on the streets of France .  Expect them instead to stand around and watch while you are victimized.  France is a wonderful country, but like much of Europe it is desperately low on certain kinds of important social capital.  French society suffers from a pernicious and nearly omnipresent pacifism.

There is, however, the occasional bright spot.  During the Iraq war, Islamist radicals were preparing to execute a hooded Italian hostage.  At the last minute the hostage pulled the sack off his own head.  “Here,” he said to his executioners as he bravely looked into their eyes, “See how an Italian man dies.”  Then he was shot.   In his very last breath he showed to the world the kind of courage that all free people’s should aspire to when faced with evil.  Perhaps Europe is not lost after all.

Mr. Enzi’s article is ostensibly  about hypocritical conservative talk-show hosts like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh.  Enzi doubts whether these tough-talkers really have the physical courage of their alleged convictions.  I don’t like Limbaugh or Beck either, because they come across as demagogues.  I too doubt their physical courage.  I bet they would be the first to crack under torture.  I know this judgment isn’t fair, since these men have never been tested, but I would respect them more if they spoke with less bravado and more humility.

Putting aside the issue of conservative talk-show hosts, Enzi’s subtext is the really interesting and provocative aspect of his article:  that we are not wholly moral unless we are willing to put ourselves in physical danger for the sake of our values and our fellow citizens.

Bertrand Russell, perhaps because he lived his life among the highly privileged, may seldom if ever have encountered brutality, except in books.  His world was full of pampered intellectuals, poets and idealists.   That free people would risk losing all of humanity in order to protect their freedom was a concept that Russell, for all of his intellect, could not grasp. Like many other intellectuals and idealists, he could not admit that there will be no paradise in the this world.  And his fear made him ready to throw away what civilization humanity has achieved for his own pie in the sky vision.  What Captain Black understands, and the great Nobel Laureat does not, is that free and moral people must be ready to fight and die for what they believe or else they and their values will be extinguished.