Power & powerlessness
O'Brien, Dennis
Continuing the conversation Power & powerlessness Susan Sontag in the New Yorker (September 24) said that the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was the consequence...
...We feel ill at ease thinking that powerlessness corrupts because we assume that corruption occurs only where there is some power to do good...
...Dennis O'Brien is a frequent contributor to Commonweal...
...The United States is not "the Great Satan...
...If the terrorist pilots were courageous, so were the youngsters who carefully planned and executed the attacks at Columbine High School...
...Daniel Maguire of Marquette University writing in Catholic New Times (October 7) characterized the American response as "the vapid answer of an arrogant national culture which has lost its talent for healthy guilt...
...But consider the obverse of Acton's terse observation: powerlessness corrupts and absolute powerlessness corrupts absolutely...
...For some leftist critics of U. S. policy, September 11 was punishment for the cardinal sin of power and pride reflecting Lord Acton's dictum that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely...
...Susan Sontag has Commonweal 8 October 26,2001 been roundly criticized for rejecting the characterization of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon as "cowardly acts...
...If slogans about power and powerlessness express a somber view of human history, it is illuminating to see how they fail in sacred history...
...Given the temptations of power and powerlessness, one could characterize the right and left critics of our response as follows...
...Aristotle had it right when he said that virtue was a mean between excess and defect...
...What interests me is how the self-proclaimed powerlessness of the left intellectuals results in a sort of terrorism of the very concepts that are essential to any reasonable discussion of ethics and politics...
...The powerful could do good but, being corrupt, they use power in the wrong way...
...Our domestic critics see the United States as a perverse superpower in concluding that we could be that superlatively wicked, that any nation could be that good at being bad...
...No doubt many of the sins of the state arise from the blindness of power, but for all that this superpower is not supercorrupt...
...The left intellectuals, impressed by the power of their bright ideas, are frustrated that these ideas are not used to eliminate the domestic boobs who are running the country...
...Living in a society dominated by an arrogant and ruthless superpower, Jesus rejects the terrorist tactics of the Zealots...
...In the Christian story, the obverse proposition is also rejected...
...On the cross Jesus is revealed as absolutely powerless—he even asks whether God has forsaken him...
...The story of Jesus of Nazareth shows that absolute powerlessness does not corrupt absolutely...
...Aristotle again: "as the person of ethical wisdom would decide...
...Terrorism may be the absolute corruption of absolute powerlessness...
...Forsaken, he cannot and does not call for God's vengeance...
...Just as suicide may be the final capitulation to personal powerlessness, terrorism may be the ultimate nihilistic political act...
...She contrasted them to U.S...
...Hanging the country on the framework of sacred history can cast America as either the Great Satan superpower or the Suffering Servant who should refuse power...
...That he resists the all-too-human compulsions or corruptions of powerlessness could be sign enough that his was a divine life...
...Continuing the conversation Power & powerlessness Susan Sontag in the New Yorker (September 24) said that the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was the consequence of actions by "the world's self-proclaimed superpower...
...We should hope for ethical wisdom to discern the mean...
...It is possible to have too little fear as well as too much...
...However one might refine these observations about the corruptions of power and the compulsions of powerlessness, the two slogans sum up a certain pessimism about human behavior...
...pilots who bomb whole cities from the safe impunity of thirty thousand feet...
...The current situation for the United States poses special temptations for Christians...
...The right militarists, impressed by the power of all our shiny weapons, are frustrated that they are not used to eliminate the foreign bastards who are threatening the country...
...Commonweal 9 October 26,2001...
...Religious fanaticism overrides ethical wisdom so that the truly fearful—killing the innocent—becomes not fearful at all...
...If God as absolute power is good, Jesus crucified as absolute powerlessness is also good...
...Realistically, the country is not the former, and it is doubtful that it could or should pretend to the latter...
...One opposite to courage is cowardice, but another is rashness, foolhardiness...
...On the contrary, she argued, the "pilots" of the planes were courageous, willing to give their lives for a cause...
...In the case of the divine, absolute power does not corrupt absolutely because God is absolute power and absolutely good...
...It does not take great insight or effort to catalogue the failures of American culture and political policy...
...How do we decide...
...rather, he asks that his persecutors be forgiven...
...The powerless lack capacity to do almost anything and so their destructive acts are regarded as mere matters of compulsion...
...There is something to be said for her view—but not much...
...Virtue in this case will be "in the middle" between excess and defect of power...
...From a Christian standpoint, it may be no more than a reminder of the pervasiveness of sin across the spectrum of power and powerlessness...
...It is a commonplace that powerlessness leads to social pathologies such as addiction and crime...
...Let me offer one egregious comparison...
Vol. 128 • October 2001 • No. 18
