A 'yes' for democracy
Compa, Lance
REPORT FROM HAITI A 'YES' FOR DEMOCRACY CONSTITUTIONAL PLEBISCITE "I voted 'Yes' for them, not for me," declared a white-haired man emerging from a voting station in Haiti's constitutional...
...But how can anyone deny its existence...
...Many Haitians echoed this fear in private discussions before the plebiscite...
...Likewise, contemporary secular humanists are unlikely to be persuaded that they are anything other than severely rational in spirit when we point out to them that their materialistic metaphysic, their sentimental and relativistic ethic, and their scientistic epistemology are all acts of faith...
...Could this movement toward democracy in Haiti win the constitution through a "people's vote," organized and conducted by the citizenry instead of a reluctant government...
...economic aid has almost doubled...
...We have to change the political culture of the people and the mentality of the army before it's too late," went the refrain...
...My car carries no bumper stickers that say "Pat Robertson for President" or "In case of rapture, this car will return to Tokyo without its driver...
...With Haiti's history of social struggle and a sizable wealthy class that will not readily sacrifice for the country, more tensions are likely to arise in the months and years ahead...
...or that there is a great deal of organized crime in America that has little or no connection with the "families...
...The action freed $4.8 million in nonlethal military aid to the CNG...
...While many groups complained of specific provisions (students and professors, for example, argued thtv: lie clause prohibiting military intervention in schools' academic functions left open the possibility of action against campus-based political involvement), most elements of the movement that forced Duvalier's flight concluded that the new charter deserved support for its guarantees of civil liberties, checks and balances, and the important ten-year ban on officials of the old regime running for political office...
...Even the deistic wing of the Enlightenment regarded its affirmation of the existence of God not as an act of faith but as an act of knowledge...
...Secular humanism is the hobgoblin of the crackpot right wing of American Protestantism, is it not...
...that this or that cited instance of it (for example, the Alabama textbooks) are not really instances of it at all...
...As it has throughout the course of the new democratic movement in Haiti, the Catholic church had a key part in the referendum process...
...But it hardly dents the country's seemingly intractable poverty...
...Asked to explain the response, a young organizer in Gonaives, the port city where students sparked the movement that ended in the flight of Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier in February 1986, told us: "The people took ove<- the process — organizing, educating, mobilizing for a genuine people's vote...
...One woman chewed up the "No" ballot and swallowed it: ' 'That's for the Duvaliers and the Macoutes," she proclaimed, referring to the paramilitary thugs who sustained the tyranny launched by "Papa Doc" Francois Duvalier in 1957...
...They see the premature aid as a signal to General Regala that he can count on U.S...
...Then the interim Council of National Government (CNG), still dominated by army men, made little effort to inform the public about the issues or mechanics of the vote...
...But how anyone, at this late date in the world's history, can honestly deny the existence of the thing is beyond me...
...Fewer than 5 percent of the voters appeared for that election...
...I am shocked neither by Darwin nor by the National Council of Churches...
...Just as important as the constitution itself, though, carrying out a successful referendum was indispensable to the survival of the democratic movement...
...The Gonaives organizers took this as evidence of continued Duvalierist influence among conservative clergy...
...Is the Enlightenment still alive in America today...
...And if the Enlightenment tradition is still alive and well in America, then it should come as no surprise to discover that some of the anti-Christian elements of that tradition are also alive and well...
...Our observer team watched it happen...
...He immediately reshuffled his officers to place loyalists in key assignments, making Regala the undisputed strong man in the CNG and in the army...
...But certain textbooks used in the Alabama public schools do in fact, Judge Hand found, promote secular humanism...
...Duvalierists are still lodged in the military and in CNG ministries...
...The air was suspenseful on the eve of the vote...
...It is too soon to conclude that Haiti's move toward democracy is irreversible...
...It is simply an expression of wonder at the fact that certain latter-day children of Voltaire and Diderot can fail to see what is obvious to the most uncultured of Biblethumping yahoos...
...This was not a people beaten down by thirty years of Duvalierist dictatorship and macoutiste terrorism...
...it saw them instead as propositions of science and scientific philosophy...
...Nationalist, antiAmerican rhetoric is already commonplace...
...Voters swelled to the polls with pride, dignity, and discipline...
...Secular humanism being a religion, he said, it is subject to both the protections and the limitations of the First Amendment...
...It takes no bumpkin prone to seeing bogeymen to realize this...
...The U.S...
...Nearly 45 percent of Haiti's adults went to the polls, an astonishing turnout in a country with 80 percent illiteracy and crushing poverty...
...The constitutional referendum showed that the Haitian people are ready for change...
...Newspapers, magazines, the two national television networks, and church-run radio stations began non-stop readings, commentary, and debates on the new charter...
...To inform such believers that they really are believers, not pure knowers, would be to hurl accusations at them that they would regard as simply ridiculous...
...observers saw thousands of Haitians openly, joyfully stuffing white "Yes" votes into ballot boxes and tearing up the yellow "No" ballots...
...Another low turnout would let the CNG discount the validity of the plebiscite in any future move to seize power...
...He said the church is firm in its support for continued progress toward full democracy in Haiti, attributing contrary suspicions to youthful impatience...
...or even as a censure of secular humanism...
...In two years Haiti will have another military dictatorship," one well-placed European observer told us...
...A week before the referendum Colonel William Regala, one of the three members of the CNG, was promoted to Brigadier General, bypassing two senior officers in line for the post...
...After all, aren't these the same people 8 May 1987: 263 who reject all theories of biological evolution, preferring instead, with a truly wonderful degree of scriptural illiteracy, to read the opening of Genesis as though it were a textbook in natural science...
...I don't mind those who critique the popular conception of the Mafia: who say, for instance, that it should be called La Cosa Nostra, not the Mafia...
...He pointed at knots of children watching their parents line up to vote...
...that it should not be called a religion but instead a philosophy or a worldview...
...after all, the U.S...
...If the army is not, another showdown between Haiti's fledgling democracy and longstanding tyranny is inevitable...
...So far, United States policy in Haiti has been skillfully applied, though many activists told us they are waiting for the American honeymoon with Haitian democracy to end...
...He was a member of a delegation of independent observers to the Haitian constitutional referendum...
...that it is not a single thing but many things, which bear at most a family resemblance to one another...
...Visiting thirty polling stations in different parts of the country, a private delegation of U.S...
...or that the organization isn't quite as tight and disciplined as it is sometimes represented in movies...
...The Haitian people showed a remarkable capacity for democratic action in their 1987 constitutional referendum...
...That's fine...
...But viewed sociologically, the judge may be close to having an interesting point...
...but it wasn't absent even in the former, as names like Hume and Edward Gibbon and Tom Paine testify...
...264: Commonweal...
...These people don't know how to handle democracy...
...State Department certified Haiti's progress on human rights despite several unsolved murders, beatings, and "disappearances" under the post-Duvalier CNG...
...While Radio Soldi, the church's island-wide radio station, combined civics lessons on the new charter with advocacy for a "Yes" vote, the bishops' conference simply urged the faithful to vote without suggesting a preference...
...Where will the United States government stand then...
...Bishop Emmanuel Constant of Gonaives, the moderate, former chairman of the Haitian bishops' conference, explained that the difference reflected divergent roles of the radio station, on one hand, and the bishops' body on the other...
...Before proceeding, I want to assure the reader that my snickering credentials are in good order...
...We met with Pere Yvon Joseph on the eve of the vote in the northern coast city of Cap Haitien, where he directs the church'sMisyon Alfa (Alpha Mission), the literacy 262: Commonweal program aimed at teaching adult citizens to read and write...
...Going forward or going under: this was the choice for those seeking change in Haiti...
...All his work in the weeks leading up to the referendum was devoted to preparing for the vote, with wide-ranging discussions about konstitisyon, Haitian Creole for constitution...
...eased Baby Doc's flight last year, providing the transport plane, a la Marcos, to ship him and his family to France...
...It was the opposite of last year's failed election...
...The young activists in Gonaives who told us how they got out the vote in their city expressed criticism for what they saw as ambivalence on the part of the church...
...lance compa Lance Compa is Washington representative of the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (UE...
...The dictators stole the best years of my life," he said, tears welling in his eyes...
...REPORT FROM HAITI A 'YES' FOR DEMOCRACY CONSTITUTIONAL PLEBISCITE "I voted 'Yes' for them, not for me," declared a white-haired man emerging from a voting station in Haiti's constitutional referendum in late March...
...Three days before the referendum the U.S...
...support if he moves to take power on a claim of "chaos" in the country...
...The new constitution curbs a president's power, breaks off the police from military command, and bars from political office for ten years officials of the Duvalierist dictatorship and members of the Tonton Macoutes...
...None of this, I hasten to add, is intended as an endorsement of Judge Hand's odd decision...
...Therefore, these textbooks — forty-four in all, although he amended his ruling to allow four home economics texts to be used if they deleted certain unapproved portions — would have to be removed from the classrooms of the state...
...And if I had my choice between turning the country over to the secular humanists or turning it over to the sorts who get exercised about secular humanism, I'd choose the former...
...on the contrary, we saw a people resolute in their desire for democratic rights...
...The Enlightenment was, of course, a very mixed bag, but in its most celebrated representatives it tended to be decidedly anti-Christian — even though these representatives observed a stylistic etiquette which obliged them to profess Christianity ("our holy religion," as David Hume, that exquisite ironist, liked to call it) at the very moment they were attacking it...
...Of course it is, as we shall constantly be reminded during the next two or three years while commemorating that magnificent fruit of the Enlightenment, the United States Constitution...
...But I'm puzzled by the people who respond to the religion-of-secularhumanism thesis by pretending that the thesis is utterly preposterous and that those who subscribe to it are laughable bumpkins — and are such not simply as a matter of empirical fact but as a matter of psychological necessity...
...There will be state and local elections this July, and the election of a civilian president and a national legislature is set for November 1987...
...On second thought, I retract what I said above: I really can understand how secular humanists might remain unaware of the existence of their faith...
...This constitution can save our young people from the same fate...
...The articles of its creed it did not see as articles of a creed...
...or as a round of applause for right-wing Protestantism...
...OF SEVERAL HINDS David R. Carlin, Jr...
...did little to disturb thirty years of Duvalierist rule...
...The faith of the Enlightenment, after all, was a faith that believed it had transcended the need for faith...
...You can argue that it is wrongly named...
...The anti-Christian flavor of the Enlightenment was weaker, to be sure, in the English-speaking countries than on the European continent...
...Can the United States display a similar capacity for tolerance if Haitian democracy takes a turn not to its liking...
...According to official vote tallies released April 12, more than 99 percent of that man's compatriots who voted in the March 29 plebiscite felt the same way about Haiti's new charter and its repudiation of thirty years of Duvalierist rule...
...Likewise I find it hard to understand how anyone can honestly deny the existence of the cultural phenomenon pointed at by the title: religion of secular humanism...
...Despite this" shaky mandate, the constituent assembly drafted a genuinely liberal constitution...
...Most Haitian democrats had argued against the aid, asking the U.S...
...GOD'S RIGHT HAND THE JUDGE & THE ENLIGHTENMENT Viewed constitutionally, Judge W. Brevard Hand's decision that "secular humanism" is a religion is no doubt an absurdity — as virtually every constitutional authority who has ventured to comment on the decision has declared...
...A chaotic vote marked by intimidation, fraud, or the feared provocations by holdover Duvalierists might give the army just the excuse it needed to cut short the democratic experiment and hold on to power...
...to wait until the installation of an elected civilian government in early 1988 before helping the Haitian military...
...Thousands of volunteers came forward to set up, staff, and observe the polling stations...
...Among the limitations, of course, is that it cannot be promoted in public schools, just as Catholicism, Methodism, Judaism, etc., cannot be promoted...
...This reaction reminds me of people who deny the existence of the Mafia...
...Vocal demands forced the government to issue a version of the constitution in Creole, the language of the Haitian masses...
...a passing knowledge of the cultural history of the last three centuries will do just as well...
...Since then U.S...
...Secular humanism is nothing other than a contemporary descendant (though not the only contemporary descendant) of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment...
...She was talking about the vote for a constituent assembly last October...
...It is customary to snicker at the folks who contend that there exists such a thing as the religion of secular humanism...
...And certainly none of it is intended as a denunciation of the Enlightenment, which I, like all reasonable persons, regard as one of history's great moments of human progress and liberation...
...Hand, chief judge of the U.S...
...district court that sits in Mobile, Alabama, rendered his decision in early March...
...Trade unions, youth groups, social service agencies, human rights organizations, even conservative Protestant churches that normally steer clear of politics turned their meetings and ceremonies into seminars on the draft constitution...
Vol. 114 • May 1987 • No. 9
