NewsUpper SchoolStudent LifeService
Be Brave
Oct 29, 2001 8:00 AM
By Stefan Eady - Faculty
Given that fear seems to be more prominent in the minds of Americans because of the September 11 terrorist attacks and also the recent concerns about Anthrax,David V. Hicks, Darlington president, spoke to Upper School students about courage, during Chapel, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2001. PSALMS 27: 1-6
What I want to say to you this morning is probably not as considered and calmly worded as it should be, but in the past week, several otherwise unrelated experiences have caused me to wonder if we are not becoming a nation of crybabies. I want to talk with you for a few minutes about courage.
In 1972, after completing my graduate work in England, I had an opportunity to study at the University of Moscow. These were the Cold War years. The hard freeze was on. The Soviet government had such a tight grip on things that Pravda and Izvestia, Moscow’s daily papers, had to stop reporting the Spassky-Fischer chess tournament after the American Fischer took the lead.
My Russian counterparts, all otherwise law-abiding students, lived in constant fear. They all owned books of poetry by Pasternak, Mandelstam, and others that were forbidden, for example. None of them trusted their government, or what they were being taught in school, or what they read in the papers, or the custodian of their apartment house. I learned from that experience that freedom ultimately derives from trust: our trust in the government, our trust in our institutions like the police, army, schools, hospitals, airlines, postal service, etc., and our trust in one another. In the absence of that trust, we live in fear.
Last week, I received a memo from a school organization in New Jersey that had already recommended canceling all international travel this school year and was inquiring about whether I thought it was prudent to extend this ban to domestic travel. I must tell you that although I take very seriously my responsibility to do everything I can to ensure the safety of our students and teachers, I was shocked by this memo. It seemed to me profoundly unpatriotic and subversive.
Yesterday, I picked up the latest copy of US NEWS with its ominous cover and these words boldly flashed across the cover: HIGH ANXIETY – ARE ANTHRAX SCARES JUST THE BEGINNING?
Last night, I watched Congressmen on the news browbeating the leaders of the CDC and new Homeland Defense, demanding why they had failed to anticipate the various complications resulting from anthrax in the mail.
Frankly, most of the news I hear is old news, but it’s constantly repeated and commented upon ad nauseum, especially if it’s terrifying or can allow the media to imagine even more frightening scenarios. This is why I say that we are starting to sound like a nation of crybabies. We are hyperventilating out of fear. We need to pause for a moment and catch our breath. Perhaps someone needs to slap us in the face.
We hear on the news that terrorism threatens our freedoms by forcing us to put limits on our civil rights. Are we now going to have to carry identification, for example? Can the police now stop and search us without showing cause?
This, I think, misses the point. Terrorism is about eroding trust: trust in our government, our institutions, and one another. When we lose our trust in these, we change our behavior. We become more guarded, fearful to enter large buildings, to attend public events, to fly, to open our mail, etc. We become like the citizens of countries that are not free: the Soviet Union in 1972.
The terrorists have already demonstrated great cleverness and creativity in using our own characteristics and strengths as a free society against us: the openness of our borders, the liberality of our immigration laws, our ease of communicating and traveling, our open access to information, and our respect for personal privacy.
But we seem unable to realize that the real weapon they are turning on us now is our own media and the openness of our own representative government. Normally, we expect a free press and a responsible Congress to be skeptical of government and of our institutions. Through tough skepticism, these institutions (the Third and Fourth Estates) hold others accountable. But it is obvious that this skepticism is now promoting a kind of distrust of government, of our institutions, and of one another – just what the terrorists want.
Some things to remember:
· The relative insignificance of anthrax as a health issue;
· The long history of terrorism in other free societies (Great Britain’s magnanimous response to September 11; France’s more honest response.)
· The terrorist objective: if wee become afraid, lose trust, change our patterns of behavior – THEY win.
Remember too the Battle of Etowah, October 1793
· Slaughter of 13 men, women and children at Cavett’s Station near Knoxville
· Governor Blount calls out militia, headed by General John Sevier
· Pursuit of Indians to Rome
· The battle: Chief Kingfisher and Hugh Lawson White
Consider how little life has changed in the 208 years since General Sevier and Chief King Fisher fought their battle here.
We are still living on the frontier between tribal savagery and civilization, a frontier where even our physical safety cannot be guaranteed or taken for granted. We still need both mental and physical courage to defend our freedoms and to live in peace.
We still face an enemy that has his own reasons for hating us. Whether or not we understand or can sympathize with his reasons, or wish to romanticize our enemy as a “noble savage” or a defender of the oppressed, we must still defend ourselves from his deadly and indiscriminate attacks, and the only way to do that is to take the battle to him.
Every American citizen is still a de facto member of the militia and may find himself, or herself, on any given day on the front lines of this new war. Our enemy makes no distinction between the soldier and the citizen. Nor can we. We are all soldiers in this war. We need to be brave, prepared to lay down our lives if called upon to do so.
We are still, for all our education and scientific endeavor, our religious belief and political correctness, a deeply flawed race, full of fear and hate and contradiction, in desperate need of human as well as divine forgiveness.
We need to remember the bravery of our forefathers who lived on a frontier far more ferocious than the one we now live on. They did not lose their trust in one another and in their free institutions just because these weren’t perfect. They understood the need to be brave every day and to act as if they were free from fear. How else could they have settled the frontiers of this country and run the many risks they ran?
Be of good courage and love one another.
What I want to say to you this morning is probably not as considered and calmly worded as it should be, but in the past week, several otherwise unrelated experiences have caused me to wonder if we are not becoming a nation of crybabies. I want to talk with you for a few minutes about courage.
In 1972, after completing my graduate work in England, I had an opportunity to study at the University of Moscow. These were the Cold War years. The hard freeze was on. The Soviet government had such a tight grip on things that Pravda and Izvestia, Moscow’s daily papers, had to stop reporting the Spassky-Fischer chess tournament after the American Fischer took the lead.
My Russian counterparts, all otherwise law-abiding students, lived in constant fear. They all owned books of poetry by Pasternak, Mandelstam, and others that were forbidden, for example. None of them trusted their government, or what they were being taught in school, or what they read in the papers, or the custodian of their apartment house. I learned from that experience that freedom ultimately derives from trust: our trust in the government, our trust in our institutions like the police, army, schools, hospitals, airlines, postal service, etc., and our trust in one another. In the absence of that trust, we live in fear.
Last week, I received a memo from a school organization in New Jersey that had already recommended canceling all international travel this school year and was inquiring about whether I thought it was prudent to extend this ban to domestic travel. I must tell you that although I take very seriously my responsibility to do everything I can to ensure the safety of our students and teachers, I was shocked by this memo. It seemed to me profoundly unpatriotic and subversive.
Yesterday, I picked up the latest copy of US NEWS with its ominous cover and these words boldly flashed across the cover: HIGH ANXIETY – ARE ANTHRAX SCARES JUST THE BEGINNING?
Last night, I watched Congressmen on the news browbeating the leaders of the CDC and new Homeland Defense, demanding why they had failed to anticipate the various complications resulting from anthrax in the mail.
Frankly, most of the news I hear is old news, but it’s constantly repeated and commented upon ad nauseum, especially if it’s terrifying or can allow the media to imagine even more frightening scenarios. This is why I say that we are starting to sound like a nation of crybabies. We are hyperventilating out of fear. We need to pause for a moment and catch our breath. Perhaps someone needs to slap us in the face.
We hear on the news that terrorism threatens our freedoms by forcing us to put limits on our civil rights. Are we now going to have to carry identification, for example? Can the police now stop and search us without showing cause?
This, I think, misses the point. Terrorism is about eroding trust: trust in our government, our institutions, and one another. When we lose our trust in these, we change our behavior. We become more guarded, fearful to enter large buildings, to attend public events, to fly, to open our mail, etc. We become like the citizens of countries that are not free: the Soviet Union in 1972.
The terrorists have already demonstrated great cleverness and creativity in using our own characteristics and strengths as a free society against us: the openness of our borders, the liberality of our immigration laws, our ease of communicating and traveling, our open access to information, and our respect for personal privacy.
But we seem unable to realize that the real weapon they are turning on us now is our own media and the openness of our own representative government. Normally, we expect a free press and a responsible Congress to be skeptical of government and of our institutions. Through tough skepticism, these institutions (the Third and Fourth Estates) hold others accountable. But it is obvious that this skepticism is now promoting a kind of distrust of government, of our institutions, and of one another – just what the terrorists want.
Some things to remember:
· The relative insignificance of anthrax as a health issue;
· The long history of terrorism in other free societies (Great Britain’s magnanimous response to September 11; France’s more honest response.)
· The terrorist objective: if wee become afraid, lose trust, change our patterns of behavior – THEY win.
Remember too the Battle of Etowah, October 1793
· Slaughter of 13 men, women and children at Cavett’s Station near Knoxville
· Governor Blount calls out militia, headed by General John Sevier
· Pursuit of Indians to Rome
· The battle: Chief Kingfisher and Hugh Lawson White
Consider how little life has changed in the 208 years since General Sevier and Chief King Fisher fought their battle here.
We are still living on the frontier between tribal savagery and civilization, a frontier where even our physical safety cannot be guaranteed or taken for granted. We still need both mental and physical courage to defend our freedoms and to live in peace.
We still face an enemy that has his own reasons for hating us. Whether or not we understand or can sympathize with his reasons, or wish to romanticize our enemy as a “noble savage” or a defender of the oppressed, we must still defend ourselves from his deadly and indiscriminate attacks, and the only way to do that is to take the battle to him.
Every American citizen is still a de facto member of the militia and may find himself, or herself, on any given day on the front lines of this new war. Our enemy makes no distinction between the soldier and the citizen. Nor can we. We are all soldiers in this war. We need to be brave, prepared to lay down our lives if called upon to do so.
We are still, for all our education and scientific endeavor, our religious belief and political correctness, a deeply flawed race, full of fear and hate and contradiction, in desperate need of human as well as divine forgiveness.
We need to remember the bravery of our forefathers who lived on a frontier far more ferocious than the one we now live on. They did not lose their trust in one another and in their free institutions just because these weren’t perfect. They understood the need to be brave every day and to act as if they were free from fear. How else could they have settled the frontiers of this country and run the many risks they ran?
Be of good courage and love one another.
