I suppose if I stop and think about it I am the kind of person they like to call a "public intellectual" which means that people who don’t make their living in the academy have had the opportunity perhaps far too frequently to eat rubber chicken and listen to me. I’ve spoken to Rotary Clubs; Lion’s Clubs; the Masonic Temple of Manhattan; a Texas Association of Ophthalmologists; bankers; lawyers; civic planners; museum curators; engineers; radio executives; rehabilitation counselors; police groups; dog handlers; tourism experts; alumni associations of all kinds; I’ve spoken to jogging societies; church groups; politicians; taxi drivers; I’ve spoken to groups that are concerned with the art of public speaking; I’ve even spoken to a group of Austrian Dadaists who were assembled in a cave inside a mountain in the middle of the city of Graz.
For the most part I don’t really like the word "intellectual" as a marker of identity. I remember when ex-Beatle John Lennon snarled to a Rolling Stone interviewer that he was too intellectual "even though I’m not really an intellectual." I was 16 at the time Lennon said that, but I knew that I didn’t want to be part of a revolution that excluded dancing. (And yes, I’d also heard that quip from Emma Goldman around that time…)
Still I think more and more of the price that we all pay in our contemporary and largely anti-intellectual culture if we don’t declare ourselves to be critically engaged with the honorable traditions of the Enlightenment. In turn I believe that this means that here in America we must fight ardently for freedom in all its forms: social and economic freedom, freedom of expression, and yes, the freedom we call human rights.
I believe that we are losing the war in Iraq because we are largely perceived as a nation that is not fighting for freedom either domestically or internationally.
I’m not the first person to say this and I won’t be the last. But I’m wagering that not one of the 11 GOP representatives who met privately with President Bush raised this essential point. We are losing because of Guantanamo Bay and because of the prison scandals inside Iraq. We are losing because we aren’t fighting for freedom. We can’t even seem to deliver it here at home. This is the most bitter pill of all: we are not fighting from a position of virtue as we did in the second world war. History shows that nations that do not fight to protect human rights always lose.
Yesterday was the 75th birthday of my friend, the poet Sam Hamill who among other things has been one of the most ardent protestors of America’s military involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq. Sam’s been involved with Poets Against War and he continues to travel widely and speak out about the injustices that are being committed in our nation’s good name.
Thank you Sam. Peace!
S.K.
Planet of the Blind 