One God – One World
One Race – One Caste
You have to lose your life.
You do not have to lose your freedom.
Your freedom is more precious than your life.
Walter Russell Mead has observed of the 20th Century: War, even brutal war, was more merciful than communist rule. There is a deep truth in this, one which touches comments on war made years ago at West Point by MG (R) William F. Garrison. Garrison said, paraphrasing:
If you are going to be a fireman, I cannot imagine that you would not want to put out fires. If you are going to be a soldier, I cannot imagine why you would not want to go to war, and when you are in war, the nastier and more awful it gets, the more you love it.
Protecting human freedom is more important than protecting human life. Human life is going to be lost ipso facto. This cannot be prevented. It can be delayed, to some extent, but it cannot be prevented. However, the loss of human freedom CAN be both delayed and prevented. This is why human life is put under threat deliberately — as during war — in order to protect human freedom.
Human freedom outvalues human life. Every American and many not-Americans knows this to be true.
Your freedom is more important to you — and to everyone else — than is your life. You will lose your life no matter what you do. You do not have to lose your freedom. Your freedom you can protect and keep if you use it to do it.
You have to use your life to protect your freedom. Life is expendable, freedom is not. GEN George S. Patton indicated this phenomenon, this reality, this truth in saying he would not want to live in a world bereft of heroism and the glory (weight) of accomplishment to protect freedom.
Mead counts war as good and bad by body counts, by loss of human life. He is far from alone these days in doing that. But loss of human life is an improper measure of the necessity, purpose, and outcome of war or struggle of any kind.
The potential for loss of human freedom is the proper measure of war’s — and any struggle’s — necessity, purpose, and outcome. Whatever prevents THAT loss, regardless the body count — which competent generalship minimizes for both sides — makes war good, and more to the point, moral.
If you use body count to count war as good or bad, where do you draw the line? One? Two? Ten million? What is an acceptable loss? What you can get away with before press and pundit hyenas start calling you names?
What are civilian casualties? Who in war is a civilian? There are none. We wring hands over body counts and targets in war even though we have no reliable, no fixed fact to support decision in those regards. Decision making, so called, using body count as standard of measurement is just whatever emotions are in the room at the time: that many bodies is OK, but that many bodies is not OK. This is nothing. This is a definition of hysteria, chaos, which largely describes our political situation today.
War is measured by whether it is moral or not, and that IS a reliable, a fixed fact to support decision for or against war and for or against specific targets in war. Moral is that which protects human freedom Immoral is that which subverts or attacks human freedom. These are fixed points for decision-making. Body counts are wraiths.
The same realities and therefore reasoning apply in pandemic response. War against a pandemic is waged to protect human freedom — which pandemic threatens as much as can foreign ideas and nationals — not to protect human life. Human life will be lost willy-nilly, pandemic or no.
Human freedom does not have to be lost. It can be saved by acts protecting it. Human freedom can even be retrieved and regained, something which cannot be done for human life once it is gone. However, if unprotected — and in consequence lost — human freedom can only be regained in tandem with the severest possible exsanguination.
Always present is someone wanting to attack and eliminate human freedom by eliminating human life. They want war and must be shown it, to the demise of their will to eliminate human freedom. This is a constant of life in this world. Thus it is truly said, fight or die, meaning, protect your freedom or lose it along with your life.
Fight the Devil to protect your freedom, not to protect your life, which is less important than your freedom. No one can do this for you. You must do it for yourself, at every moment in every place you occasion.
Fight for your freedom and you are a hero.
Fight for your life and you are a zero.
It was to teach mankind the greatness of divine love that Jesus came. He resolved on three tasks: one, to be filled with Divine love and to share it with others – this was the main purpose of his life; two, he should not succumb to praise or censure in carrying out his mission; three, to inspire in others the conviction that the Divinity within is omnipresent. Jesus considered spreading the gospel of love as his foremost task. He encountered many ordeals in carrying out his mission, but he regarded them all as challenges to be overcome. He was determined to treat pleasure and pain, and sickness and failure with equanimity. He could not bear to see anyone suffer. Every human being is potentially a messenger of God. Humanness demands that everyone should manifest the Divinity within him. Everyone should be a real messenger of God and strive to promote peace and security in the world. There is no other path to be followed. God’s message is sacred and totally free from self-interest.
– Divine Discourse, December 25, 1995
- Sathya Sai Baba – Divine Discourse, December 25, 1995 / Daily Email, Sai Inspires: Subscription
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