http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0321-26.htm
Published on Monday, March 21, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
The World is Waiting for
an Answer:
Are we Americans, or Human Beings?
by Robert Jensen
Speech given at the Austin, TX, antiwar rally marking
the second anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq
March 19, 2005
First, a disclaimer: Given all the fussing about
dangerous radical professors these days, I should
make it clear that while I teach at the University
of Texas at Austin, I don’t speak for the university.
(Not that anyone at this rally would ever imagine
that I do.) I repeat: What I’m about to say
is not official policy of the University of Texas.
In case anyone was confused, the University of Texas
is not a radical institution and is not committed
to anti-empire politics.
It’s more important to make it clear that I
don’t claim to speak FOR anyone. Instead, I
try to speak with people, to speak as part of a movement
for justice and peace. And in nearly 800 cities and
towns across the United States today -- and all around
the world -- people are in the streets together saying
no to war, no to U.S. aggression, no to empire.
When I looked at the list of cities where there will
be events today, I was most excited to see my hometown
of Fargo, North Dakota. If people are in the streets
in Fargo, the revolution must be just around the corner.
You betcha. If people are protesting in Fargo, it
means something’s happening here, in the United
States, in the empire.
What’s happening is hopeful. It means that
even when people are deluged daily by the most relentless
and sophisticated propaganda system in the world,
they can see clearly the issues, see clearly what’s
at stake, and take action.
But we can’t be naïve about the struggle.
We have to face the serious obstacles to real justice
and peace in the world, which can’t be overcome
by one day’s protest. Let’s be clear about
those obstacles.
The first, and most obvious, problem is: George W.
Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld,
and the Republican Party. We have to commit ourselves
not just to getting these the ideologically fanatical
reactionaries out of office but also to challenging
them for control of the public conversation -- the
heart of democracy -- which they have so effectively
narrowed and degraded.
The second, and equally obvious, problem is: John
Kerry, John Edwards, Hillary Rodham Clinton and the
other corporate toadies who run the Democratic Party.
I know there are some in the antiwar movement who
believe the Democratic Party can be a vehicle to challenge
the U.S. empire. But that wasn’t true in the
last half of the 20th century, when Cold-War liberals
promoted imperial policies, and it isn’t true
in the 21st century, when War-on-Terrorism liberals
are doing their part to prop up the empire.
Those are the easy targets, the people in power.
But we face other challenges that run deeper.
We have to confront the deeply embedded racism in
the United States that makes it so easy to mobilize
public support for war, as long as the targets are
not white.
We have to confront the barbarism of the United States,
which not only has the capacity to destroy an entire
society but a proven willingness to do just that to
achieve policy goals.
But perhaps most importantly, we have to confront
the incredible affluence and the sense of entitlement
that is so common in this country. That is not a problem
exclusive to reactionary Republicans or cowardly Democrats.
It’s a problem in every corner of this country,
including in progressive politics. The United States
has 5 percent of the world’s population yet
we consume about 25 percent of the world’s oil
and 30 percent of the gross world product. We all
enjoy, to varying degrees, the cheap toys of empire.
The people at the top benefit most, but we are all
living in relative luxury compared with most of the
rest of the world. Half the world’s population
-- more than 3 billion of our brothers and sisters
-- live on less than $2 a day. Half the world’s
people live on what you and I might pay for a cup
of fancy coffee. We need to keep central in our minds
and in our hearts the fact of our affluence and their
poverty, and understand the connection.
That affluence matters politically, because it is
easy for people who live comfortably to be morally
lazy and politically passive. U.S. military and economic
power around the world helps create and perpetuate
these conditions of inequality. To challenge that
power is to challenge our own affluence. It’s
easy even for those who engage in dissident politics
to forget that changing the politics of this country
also means changing our own lives. The two projects
must go forward together.
Let me put it as clearly as I can: The way we live
in this country -- the way every one of us here at
this rally today lives -- is morally indefensible
and ecologically unsustainable. It is a way of life
that can’t be enjoyed by the rest of the world,
and it is a way of life that if unchecked literally
will destroy the world.
So, our immediate message is clear: U.S. out of Iraq
now. The U.S. occupation of Iraq cannot bring security
and democracy in Iraq. It is an impediment to security
and democracy.
Our choices over the long term are just as clear.
On all these fronts, political and personal, we have
to ask: What are we willing to give up? What risks
are we willing to take?
We have a choice: We can actually live the values
that we say guide our country or we can abandon those
values. We can work to make democracy - that is, a
system in which ordinary people have meaningful input
into the formation of public policy -- a reality in
our own country. If we don’t, the unrestrained
and violent use of U.S. power abroad will remain a
danger.
We have a choice: We can live on top of the world
or we can live in the world. The stakes are high;
if we don’t find a way to force the United States
to live in the world, before too long there may well
be no world left for anyone.
These challenges can be condensed into a simple choice:
We can be Americans, or we can be human beings.
The rest of the world is waiting for our answer.
Robert Jensen -- a journalism professor at the University
of Texas at Austin and board member of the Third Coast
Activist Resource Center (http://thirdcoastactivist.org/)
-- is the author of "Citizens of the Empire:
The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity" and "Writing
Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to
the Mainstream." He can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu.
