The Streets of Heaven

Since it was first made an occasion in 1776, the 4th of July has long served as an opportunity for remembrance and a time to honor those who have fallen since our first Independence Day. Remembrance is good. The brave souls who have given their lives in defense of our city upon a hill deserve to be honored until our republic is swept from the mountainside.

Unfortunately, this remembrance can often take the form of blind, unthinking patriotism that only serves as a tool to further divide the world into "us" and "them." Glimpses of this attitude can be seen in Bill Pullman's immortal speech in the movie Independence Day, when a ruggedly handsome but wounded president implored the world to unite against an alien menace.

As psychologically satisfying as this type of language and this type of patriotism is, it is important to remember that, in the real world, our enemies are not an unstoppable alien scourge, but rather an assortment of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, lovers and friends. When we go to war, we don't fight against some hyperbolic evil; we fight against people just like us.

As unlikely as it seems, a 1970s sitcom may have done a lot better than the 1996 blockbuster. In an episode of M*A*S*H, Father Mulcahy spends the entire half hour trying to write a war song that captures his experience with bloodshed and violence. His simple and poignant elegy to the dead is a haunting reminder of the cost of war. You can listen to the audio file here, or just read the lyrics below.

There's no one singing war songs now like people used to do

No "Over There," no "Praise the Lord," no "Glory Hallelu"

Perhaps at last we've asked ourselves what we should have asked before

With the pain and death this madness brings, what were we ever singing for?

In my opinion, Martin Sheen makes a much better fictional president than Bill Pullman. His character, Josiah Bartlet, provides a better example of how we can honor our heroes, while still appreciating the complexities of our world and respecting the dignity of all human life.

This is certainly the time for heroes, American or otherwise. And we reach for the stars.

Language Misapplied to Humanity

Far too often I find myself in the company of people who freely use epithets to distinguish themselves from those who are politically, theologically, or superficially different. People who use such words openly could care less about what other, non-bigoted people think about them. Then there are people who claim to abhor racism and bigotry, yet freely use various words to refer to those with a different skin color, sexual persuasion, etc. when they are in the company of people they feel comfortable around. They de-censor themselves when they're among friends/family, and obviously that’s when their true colors show. There are a few things wrong with this--the obvious one being their hypocrisy--but one other that really gets me is the fact that they have to make a conscientious effort to censor themselves in the first place when in public. This is painfully obvious, particularly in small Pennsylvania towns.

It’s anathema, but on the positive side there are enough people who recognize it as such and do their best to avoid thinking of others in derogatory terms. Even better, there are people who take a firm stance on bigotry of every variety, and do their best to stamp it out when they come to it, as well as teach younger people that it’s wrong to use such words and be generally small-minded. This stance clearly makes the world a better place, but I don’t believe it can genuinely improve anything when nations like ours use words like “illegal” to describe people.

The term is political—an illegal alien is one who is not legally allowed to stay in the country—but the affects are social. When people use the word “illegal” to describe another human being, it has a dehumanizing effect on the non-citizen. Tying in the individual with the idea of the law takes away their humanity, and makes it easier for people to foster animosity to those they refer to as illegal. Hitler’s Germany comes to mind, as language was clearly a powerful motivator of atrocities; by dehumanizing and distinguishing portions of the population, language made it possible for people to bypass moral judgement--judgement that's consulted when people deal with other people.

I'm not suggesting a "slippery slope" here; the above example was one historical extreme, but the idea that descriptive language affects social perception has existed long before Nazi Germany and of course and will last as long as humanity endures. The problem is that a latent form of this institutional xenophobia is evident today, and in our country no less, when cities like Altanta, Georgia don't have a transit system that extends from urban areas to the suburbs for fear of bringing in "undesirables" (not a very objective word, is it).

Using the word "illegal" to refer to other humans has the effect of making murders such as this seem less heinous than they really are; what's worse, when such murders of "illegals" do occur, there's always people who try to defend it. When the question of the legitimacy of a person is raised, you have only two choices when referring to that person--legal or illegal. Let's consider the other half of this marginalized immigrant population: they are not illegal aliens, but rather legal aliens. Generally, we as a country don't use that term to refer to such people--we call them things like US citizens, or even "fellow americans," and suddenly all semantic suggestions of judicial terminology go out the window. But If we were to be consistent, would calling someone a "legal alien" sound any better than "illegal alien"? Any "alien," legitimate or not, can only seem to exist in our national peripheral when words like "illegal" are used.

Institutionally, we need a sea change in what words we choose to apply to other human beings. It's not easy to come up with a word that would adequately replace the ones we currently use so frequently--a word that would describe a significant portion of people without stripping them of their humanity in the process--but we need to find one.