ATTACK THE DOMINANT HEIGHTS
Coleman, Mcalister
Attack The Dominant Heights By McALISTER COLEMAN THOSE who still cling to such quaint ideals as democratic decency, self-respect, and brotherly love are regarded by a highly articulate section of...
...which devour widow's houses and for a pretence make long prayers...
...I'm just enough of a liberal to believe that something can be done by men and women who reject utterly the beastly philosophy of the professional haters and are yet resolved that some of the "precious article" of freedom be plucked from the wreckage...
...We are informed that we are living in the 20th Century of Realism, not the ¦ 18th Century of Idealism...
...We have had enough of analyzing the cruelties and debasements of "free enterprise...
...I agree that it is old hat to be still trying to make democracy work in 1944 A. D. As I recall, they were worrying about this in Athens in 344 A.D...
...On the other hand, a recent issue of a pacifist paper published on the Pacific Coast bemoans my obtuseness or perhaps my intellectual dishonesty in refusing to understand that war is war no matter what you call it, and that once you accept any part of it, you have to .swallow it all—and like it...
...The salient of our counter-offensive is the dominant heights now strongly held by those who call themselves in this country, at any rate, by the beautiful, beautiful name of "free enterprisers...
...It involves a lot of sweaty spadework in an extremely unlikely soil, i.e...
...I mean those heights of industry, finance, and commerce currently held by the "devourer of widows' houses...
...I didn't know, did you, that they had ranks among chaplains...
...but he who is most obedient to the laws of the State, he shall win the palm...
...You don't understand that we're living in a changed world...
...What has a fighting chance is a determined, organized, carefully planned offensive against those aforesaid dominant heights...
...But I'll be darned if I am 'going to smea'r over the horrible things that are go-in;' on in this world with drivel about "realism" or ths old alibis of pragmatism that we used to throw around in the last war...
...Get Irwin Edman's Fountainheade of Freedom from which these quotations are taken and find out how old-fashioned it is to be concerned about freedom, and acknowledge that these shiny, streamlined "realists" have scored their point...
...Yet I believe that those not immediately engaged in the business of killing have a heavy responsibility for preserving such human values as may be living still beneath the world-wide rubble...
...I suppose that if you are a Methodist Captain chaplain you get quite a kick put of being saluted by a Second-Lieutenant Church of England chaplain...
...Enough Of Analyzing That was Christ talking in the Gospel according to Saint Mark...
...I say this, because I am going to assert that we must not entrust the government in our State to anyone because he is rich, or because he possesses any other advantages such as strength, or stature, or again birth...
...Yes, I know that it often takes as much guts to be an out and out war resister as it takes to be the first man off a landing barge...
...My friend, who also had read on3 of the chaplain's letters, said: "You're getting old, Mac, and set in your ways...
...I don't question the courage of a pacifist or a Conscientious Objector...
...That was the "Athenian Stranger" worrying about democracy in Plato's Laws...
...Some of us have been working at it since we got into long pants, and the results are certainly nothing to dance in the streets about...
...And in 1644 Gerald Winstanley, pamphleteer, agitator, and leader of the "Diggers," was saying: "The great searching of heart these days, is to find out where true freedom lies, that the Commonwealth of P^ngland might be established in peace...
...Hating Hitler and, Hirohito, as who doesn't, is a safe and somewhat shoddy way of escape from the immediate responsibilities of every genuine liberal or progressive...
...when there has been a contest for power, those who gain the upper hand, so entirely monopolize the government as to refuse all share to the defeated party and their descendants—they live watching one another, the ruling class being in perpetual fear that someone who has a recollection of former wrongs will come into power and rise up against them...
...I mean steel and aluminum and coal and power and communication and transportation—our natural resources and their distribution, over whose control we have no say whatever...
...I have never been a pacifist...
...The Only Thing To Do No doubt about my getting older, and that I'm living in a changed world...
...The time has come for us to do something about them...
...Again they were worrying about it in Palestine, centuries later: "Beware of the scribes, which love to go in long robes, and love salutations in the market places, and the chief seats in the synagogues and the uppermost room at feasts...
...This is, of course, a position where both flanks are attacked and the only thing to do is to advance at the center...
...And then recognize them for the phonies they are and "back the attack" at the center where the struggle for democracy is hottest...
...I mean that if we let those who are booted and spurred upon these heights ride over us now under whatever banners they raise up, there will be no salvaging to be done when the guns overseas cease firing...
...It is not a question, in my mind, of all or nothing...
...But I still insist that there is a definite place in this world for those who are neither war-whoopers nor war resist-ers...
...Now, according to our view, such governments are not polities at all, nor are laws right which are passed for the good of particular classes and not for the good of the whole state...
...I was talking about the amazing change of heart that hats come over an ex-pacifist parson I know who is now in the Army as a chaplain...
...Rex Stout, Clifton Fadiman, Bernard De Voto, Robert Sherwood, and Archibald MacLeish (in sack-cloth and ashes today) all agree that in a world of flame-throwers ("When I gave them a burst, they swarmed out of the pill-box like rats and we shot them down, one by one"), bombers ("It was good hunting"), and submarines ("They ran up and down the deck screaming, and then we let them have it"), people who talk about good will are public nuisandes...
...Like most ordinary people I abhor war, and the little I saw of it when I was in the Army from 1918 to 1919 convinced me that it is the dumbest, dreariest, most dreadful way of settling things ever devised by the descendants of the apes...
...Specifically, what do I mean by dominant heights...
...Nor is there anything alluringly novel about it...
...these shall receive greater damnation...
...And I can't see that just "resisting" war gets anywhere either...
...States which have such laws are not polities but parties, and their notions of justice are simply unmeaning...
...He has written a latter to his friends blowing about the fact that he has been promoted to a Captaincy...
...You might as well appear in public in a powdered wig and silver-buckled knee breeches as to go about these days talking about liberty, equality, and fraternity...
...the soil of public opinion which is daily soured by the poison of the profit propagandists...
...This is not in any way spectacular...
...Attack The Dominant Heights By McALISTER COLEMAN THOSE who still cling to such quaint ideals as democratic decency, self-respect, and brotherly love are regarded by a highly articulate section of our intelligensia as definitely dated museum pieces, if not crackpots with a faint aroma of treason about them...
Vol. 8 • June 1944 • No. 24
