Justice and Neutrality

Over the years, I realized, I’ve become what people would dub ‘politically neutral’. It’s not that I have no ideas; it’s that the ideas are on an entirely different ball field; I’m not playing on the presuppositions of the culture; I don’t accept the first premise of it’s debate, so I have no position on it’s opposing teams. Far from being a moderate or a true neutral, I hold ideas that threaten it’s very existence. But relative to its presuppositions, I’m neutral, because for me, within broad strokes, it’s morally arbitrary who is in power. I used to think one group or another was destroying America and the World. I’m still certain of that; it’s just that now I think that *all* the groups are doing it. Not because they’re groups, but because they’re what they are. This arena is one of competing evils. Nor do I find it a morally defensible framework to ‘choose between the lesser of evils’, as though supporting Mussolini is somehow acceptible because I didn’t support Hitler. These are the cowardly ‘moral stands’ of those who have admitted personal defeat but don’t have the courage to admit the true depth of the problem, because – unlike defeat – it would underscore rather than rob them of their responsibility. I cannot say, “I am not responsible, because I voted for Mussolini not Hitler.” I cannot divide life into categories and say, “I did the best I can do, because I supported Communist Guerillas over a Fascist Dictator (or vice versa). America’s hemispheric policies are so illustrative in these areas. No, I understand that either the next Mao or the next Amin or the next Pol Pot may take power, and they are all criminals against man and against the Kingdom of God, and I won’t help any of them take what they are pleased to call power which, if you have to take it, is not power but only violence, or if you must win it, it is not power but a trophy. Do I support anarchy? Only in the sense that I do not accept the false dilemma of the forms of leadership, government, and political debate currently offered, but consider them all perverse and false – illusory forms of politics – themselves therefore anarchistic. In this age, one has to be an anarchist just to have independent thought. But I’m not ready to don a black beret and retreat into coffee house intellectualism. On the contrary, I have no argument, unless I take responsibility. So currently I am with whoever is being killed by those who are doing the killing, whoever is being invaded, not those doing the invading, whoever is being forced into submission, by those doing the forcing. I am not their political ally, but I am with them in this one thing: I reject the claims of others to dominate them, for whatever reason. Even when it is said they must be brought to justice, I am with them in this: I do not recognize the justice to which they are brought as justice. Justice is what we will have when all of these governments are overturned by the one that bears the government upon his shoulders.