C. Roy ReynoldsTHANKS TO the hamhandedness of Amnesty International (AI) and its local worshippers this country has another reason for splintering over an issue that ought to have been unanimous. Apparently neither AI nor its agent was quite prepared for the reaction to their handling of the Braeton affair. The greater tragedy of the matter is that they still do not get why so many people reacted as they did, though in the wake of this reaction we have seen an attempt to modify and explain.
As the saying goes: What we have here is a failure to communicate! I can't believe that after watching events unfold there are those who have remained so obtuse that they see those of us who have not toadied to AI as 'anti-rightists'. No Sir, what we object to is not human rights. The proverbial 'milk of human kindness' runs no less in our veins than in yours.
What we object to is AI throwing dirt in the face of the nation and those who provide it the platform for the process! The principle of diplomacy has evolved over the ages as a vital grease to the machinery of international affairs. Those who would practise in the international arena ignore the reality at their own peril, not to their person so much as the cause they seek to expound. Many of us get the impression that in the instant case it might not have been a lack of the knowledge of diplomacy so much as an attitude that they were dealing with a hunnish people, so debased that the nicety of diplomacy would have been lost on them. No sense wasting good shots on blackbirds; or should I say black birds!
No Sir! It is not because we do not believe in human rights. We believe in it as ardently as you do, perhaps moreso since judging by your expressions, we tend to be more encompassing in how we regard it. We do not need any superman nor super agency to validate our authenticity. We have enough self-confidence to appreciate our humanity to know who we are. We don't need you to define us, thank you!
We don't believe that you need to tear down and demoralise a nation in order to save it. And while we would agree that patriotism can indeed be the last refuge of the scoundrel, we think that similarly human rights often provides no less a cloak. Neither concept is discredited by this reality. And when we trot this allegation glibly we ought to understand it. That scoundrels take shelter under the banner of either does not disgrace these noble ideals.
Rather it is the scoundrels who dare to defile to whom the opprobrium is directed. And we need to guard against infiltration of scoundrels in both areas. Of course enlightened discourse and dialogue would have long ago shed the much-needed light, if only we had adopted a sane and sensible approach. Human rights is too important a subject to be treated in the manner of Moses bringing down from the mountain the Ten Commandments, the embodiment of all revealed truth. Today's reality suggests the need for much more pragmatism. And the Gentiles I suspect will never get to heaven through a principle of 10 of them hanging onto the coat of a Jew!
At another level I have to confess that I am suspicious of many of those groups which have mushroomed of late seeking apparently merely to apportion blame. Human rights have been abused for centuries in this country, starting with the institution of slavery and continuing throughout the intervening years.
They say it is better late than never, but even if you are coming to the realisation late you would do well to study its, by now, systemic nature and address it along lines consistent with its entrenchment and not treat it as a latter-day phenomenon, perpetrated by readily-definable groups and individuals. If you do not, your campaign, however righteous you consider it, is almost bound to be evanescent, like the seeds which fell on stony ground: springing up quickly and just as quickly fading away.
At the present time it seems to me that most of the activists think that if only we would agree to disabuse our mind of capital punishment and rein in the police we would be transformed from vile devils to genuine certified defenders of human rights. Are they so naive as not to appreciate that that would leave the rest of us still bewitched, bothered and bewildered by the gun-toting, trigger-happy guerrillas that now stalk our lives?
Let them address this as an expansion of the dialogue on human rights. Surely the rest of us need protection. As it is, so many of us never had a chance to have our right to survival adjudicated by a court of law, however flawed they might think such an institution!
The tragedy in all this, I fear, is that after a change of government most of these now vocal groups will just go the way of all flesh. In all probability they wouldn't dare their stridency.
C. Roy Reynolds is a freelance journalist.
