“Where knowledge is a duty, ignorance is a crime.”

A responsible citizen in a modern society – especially one that influences so much of the rest of the world through its culture, foreign policy, military might, and demands on global resources – has a duty to be cognizant, to some degree, of the repercussions of his or her participation in that society.

It is not enough to know who was booted off the island last night, or the latest vote on American Idol, or have the latest scoop on some vapid pop star’s admission into rehap.

It is often said that we get the leaders we deserve. Therefore, it is our duty to know the issues of the day. It is our duty to be aware of the policies our leaders pursue in our name. It is our duty to seek knowledge of the world, our place in it, and the consequences thereof. We are not owed the freedoms and abundance of our society if we do nothing to help preserve it.

Ignorance is not bliss.

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thomas paine knowledge ignorance society

“It is not among the least of the calamities of a long continued war, that it unhinges the mind from those nice sensations which at other times appear so amiable. The continued spectacle of woe, blunts the finer feelings, and the necessity of bearing with the sight, moral obligations of society weakened, till the custom of acting by necessity, becomes an apology where it is truly a crime.”

Leaving the battlefield is sometimes the only way to stop losing the war.

Another day, another month, another year, and soon the cost of the continued war takes a toll greater than the sum of any body count, itself a morbid measure of the tragedy.

Thomas Paine’s fear in The Crisis – as it should be ours now – was that the full consequences of a war protracted is fully realized when unrelenting violence slowly kills the spirit of a nation. And then, yet again, war becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy; a murky, deadly fog through which few can penetrate. All is lost when the purpose of the war becomes the war itself.

thomas paine the crisis war war in iraq

“O ye partial ministers of your own acknowledged principals. If the bearing arms be sinful, the first going to war must be more so, by all the difference between wilful attack and unavoidable defence. Wherefore, if ye really preach from conscience, and mean not to make a political hobbyhorse of your religion, convince the world thereof, by proclaiming your doctrine to our enemies, for they likewise bear ARMS.”

War is not a moral act, even if justified by defensive necessity. When not of necessity but ideology that war is engaged, it instantly becomes harder to win; and even harder to justify when the ideology is based on falsehood, executed with an incompetent disregard for nothing but the best possible outcome, and expressed to the world through hubris and arrogance.

Justifications thus wear thin, and enemies are provided justifications of their own.

And then becomes the reality of an intractable war that nobody wins.

thomas paine foreign policy war war in iraq

“The weaker any cord is the less will it bear to be stretched, and the worse is the policy to stretch it, unless it is intended to break it.”

Is there cause for concern when regular troops, reservists, and National Guard are asked to return for a second and third tour of duty; When there is talk of “lowered standards” and “moral waivers” in regard to acceptance into the military; When military commanders speak of their forces being “stretched to the breaking point”; When wounded veterans are subjected to poor conditions and substandard treatment.

Are we stretching the cord to the breaking point? And when it breaks, what then? What happens to a foreign policy that depends so heavily on military solutions?

thomas paine rights of man foreign policy military

“For that which is a disgrace to human nature, throws something of a shade over all the human character, and each individual feels his share of the wound that is given to the whole.”

No matter how far removed we may feel, either through distance or time, from the raging and rampant genocidal lunacy that haunts human history, we all suffer. The killing and violence in Darfur is but one more example of the ravages of fear and hate on the human soul, and inflicts one more wound into our shared character as a species on this earth.

thomas paine darfur

“There never yet was any truth or any principle so irresistibly obvious that all men believed it at once. Time and reason must cooperate with each other to the final establishment of any principle; and therefore those who may happen to be first convinced have not a right to persecute others, on whom conviction operates more slowly. The moral principle of revolutions is to instruct, not to destroy.”

In Thomas Paine’s time, people did not all agree in one moment that a war of independence from Great Britain was prudent or wise. After the war was won, bitterness ensued between the Federalists and Republicans on what exact form our new government should take.

Throughout history, principles, ideas, ways of life that today we take for granted or that seem natural did not appear in the aggregate human psyche in one flash of inspired change. Some “saw the light” and many others weren’t so sure that the light wasn’t blinding to what was right.

Today has its issues which divide people on one side of belief or another. As Thomas Paine said long ago, time and reason will establish these issues as valid or not. Is modern society exacerbating a warming climate, is preemptive warfare sound foreign policy, what is the right balance between personal liberty and government intrusion on that liberty to protect the whole?

These are just some of the questions we face today that engenders bitter debate. Nobody wins when people engage in a contest of personal destruction. A right principle, put forth by a sound and respectful argument, will carry the day. All too often from the lowest echelon of society straight up to the pinnacle of power, we see the exact opposite, and then nothing is served but division, suspicion, and bitterness.

Thomas Paine current events

“The most effectual method to keep men honest is to enable them to live so. The tenderness of conscience is too often overmatched by the sharpness of want; and principle, like chastity, yields with just reluctance enough to excuse itself.”

Immediately after a 1989 international trade ban on ivory, illegal elephant poaching was nearly stopped dead in its tracks. Now, some eighteen years later, poachers have come back with a vengeance, due in large part to the fact the enforcement of the trade ban has declined through lack of funding from countries most effected by the poaching.

Many of these countries, such as Zambia and Zimbabwe, are poor and ensnared in economic and political turmoil. It is difficult for such governments to fund the enforcement necessary to protect the African Elephant from poachers. In the year ending August of 2006, up to five percent of the remaining elephant population in Africa was slaughtered, amounting to more than 23,000 elephants and 240 tons of ivory.

We here in the West probably don’t think of Elephants too much. We’ve got other things to worry about. For those that have perhaps only seen an elephant in the zoo, mere words will fall short in describing what it is to be there, in the Land of the Elephant.

To listen as they trumpet and wail in the night. To quietly watch as they lumber single file out of the hills to drink and wash in the river. To look sorrowfully and heartbroken at the site of a baby calf, lying still on the ground with no apparent wounds, very recently and mysteriously deceased; and then remember the haunting wail heard the night before; the sound of a mother mourning her young.

Later to witness the joy of two adolescents as they happily and playfully cross the river, splashing mischievously, much like any adolescent would.

Watching the slow, almost reverent, familial procession through the bush to the river, a great matriarch dipping her massive trunk for a drink; the reflection of her majestic frame rolling gently in the placid Chobe.

I am able to feel such feelings for the elephant because I am allowed. I do not burn with hunger and poverty, and I live in a land that is relatively free from political strife.

Many of Humankind’s problems are solved, at least initially, through economic incentive. If countries too poor to feed and protect their own human population are expected to fund enforcement of illegal trade laws and stop poaching, then perhaps we fail to heed the words of Thomas Paine. The international community needs to step up and provide funding and support to enforce the ban on the illegal ivory trade. It isn’t hard, or even that expensive, for rich nations to do so, it takes nothing but a desire to get it done. We did it before, and we must do it again. Saving the elephant is, in part, saving ourselves.

I wish to believe that the money I spent two years ago to journey to the Land of the Elephant helped to provide, if just a little bit, the means for those living in Botswana to live an honest life. And they, in turn, helped me do the same, if just a little bit, by allowing me to witness first-hand the power and majestic beauty of the Elephant and the land she occupies.

Nothing connects one to the earth and all its creatures more than standing quietly in the yawning dusk of the African savannah, watching a family of great elephants move quietly through the tall grass. To this day, chills go up my spine remembering that day, how humbled and awestruck it was to actually be there, in the Land of the Elephant.

Help save the elephant, and be true to the words of Thomas Paine.

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