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After Castro: New Energy, Same Strategy
When I was a kid, Fidel Castro was referred to as a "godless Communist" and we were afraid of him. Now Castro, the last lion of the godless threat, is stepping down.
Ironically, we're no longer afraid of him or his type. Now, we're much more afraid of the God-full than the godless. The communist youth leagues have yielded to the fundamentalist youth leagues: same ideological fervor; same zealous combativeness, same threat to "our way of life."
Make no mistake: the Communists earned their godless title. Stalin and his henchmen made the crushing of religious institutions a part of their program. They closed and destroyed churches, executed religious leaders, and touted atheism as the vanguard of a new socialism. Invasions of countries like Afghanistan were designed in part to crush the religion of the place, Islam. Religion was to be destroyed.
Our enemy in those days was clear and our answer equally clear. We believed in freedom; they believed in inexorable conflict. We believed in democracy; they believed in totalitarianism. We believed in self-determination, free expression, free political parties, and private property. They believed in conformity, nationalism, regimented belief systems, and the state distribution of goods and services.
The conflict had a deeper element too. At our core, we were "a nation under God." At their core, they were a nation under godless dictators. For them, religion was the opiate of the people; for us, religion was part of our free exercise of the rights endowed to us by our creator. Everything about our system of beliefs was rooted in our confidence in human freedom, our belief in human goodness, our optimism that human endeavor could produce a more prosperous, a more just, a more peaceful world. Communism could never match that.
It had no counterpart for the economic energy, the creative energy, the compassionate energy unleashed by our freedom. And at a certain level, that energy has always had a spiritual core: human equality is a spiritual ideal, human dignity is a spiritual conviction, the search for a more just and peaceful world is driven by a spiritual hunger.
That spiritual core was our great weapon in the Cold War and we need to make it our great weapon in the war against the current threat too. We can't be afraid of our faith in the spirit—whether we call it human or divine—just because religious ideologues are the new opponent. In fact, our success in the current struggle may well depend on the extent to which we are willing to believe again—believe that our nation can be a model of the spiritual power of human freedom and dignity itself. To do that, we must take the common core of our faith experience--our search for ultimate meaning and value--and find outlets for it in our public life.
During the Cold War, we expressed our search for peace through efforts like the Peace Corps; we expressed our yearning for justice through the civil rights movement; we expressed our belief in human dignity through opening opportunities to those with disabilities; we expressed our fight for freedom through our promise of protection and asylum for those escaping tyranny. We never had to mention religion, but we had the spirit.
The godless Communists never understood the kind of energy that gets released when you mix freedom with the spirit, and neither do the God-full extremists. They have one thing in common: they suggest only one way to the truth. For us, the truth has always been an unfinished search. So we should fight the new threat by doing what we do best: unleashing a creative new generation of ideas and programs that tap into our unique blend of freedom and spiritual energy and by channeling that into building peace and justice at home and abroad.
So farewell, Castro. To try to crush the spirit was your fool's errand. You may still have control of Cuba but your ideas are dead. And if we stick to our core, it won't be long before we're bidding farewell to the God-full ideologues too.
By
Timothy Shriver
|
February 25, 2008; 9:32 AM ET
| Category:
Religion From the Heart
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Posted by: Anonymous | February 25, 2008 11:26 AM
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Good article. Next time please be more explicit when naming our common enemy. We are under attack by Islamic extremists, Islamic Fundamentalists, Islamic Jihadis, or Islamo-Fascists.
Pick a name, any name, I don't care which. By naming your enemy you declare an allegience. By naming your enemy you create clarity of purpose. By naming your enemy you empower yourself through decision. By naming your enemy you proclaim yourself to your allies.
Oh, and don't tell me "Well, they're not really our enemies because we don't hate them, we want to be their friends." You can't be friends with someone who wants to kill or forcibly convert you.
Posted by: ZZim | February 25, 2008 12:33 PM
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Tim wrote, "[Christian] fundamentalist youth leagues: same ideological fervor; same zealous combativeness, same threat to 'our way of life' [as were the Marxist Communists]."
Tim has disappointed me by using this tired, defamatory rhetoric. I know him personally to be a warm and thoughtful human being.
I thought he was not only "above" communicating using such terms, but also sufficiently blessed intellectually so as not to have a need for such derogatory stereotyping of ideological opponants.
During the Cold war we expressed our search for peace through efforts like the Peace Corps AND the "Peace Through Strength" policy carried out by our armed forces across the globe. We expressed our yearning for justice and human dignity through the civil rights movement AND through our military and economic defense of otherwise-defenseless people militarily-threatened by their neighbors in western Europe, Israel, Korea, Vietnam, Central America, the Middle East, and the Balkans.
We never "had to" mention religion - we CHOSE to mention it by consistently mentioning "God"
in important presidential and congressional speeches all through the Cold War (for example, "...here on Earth, God's work must truly be our own." - JFK, Jan. 20, 1961)
Posted by: DoTheRightThing | February 25, 2008 12:34 PM
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"It won't be long before we're bidding farewell to the God-full ideologues too." I hope that you are right. I think that these God-ful ideologues are making more people flee spirituality than anything else today.
Posted by: Petronius | February 25, 2008 5:28 PM
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a nice piece of prose. communism never tolerated nationalism, contrary to what was stated in the article.
it seems the author is 'debating' and rightfully trying to show the ills of a minute offshoot of a culture/religion that is being 'fought' by the culture/religion it claims to defend!
go figure!
Posted by: abdula | February 25, 2008 11:23 PM
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Tim, nice article and truly stated.
Amazing how in the beginning people are afraid of something but it in end they find that it was something not to be feared at all.
Castro will die a with the blood of many on his hands, and not just "physical" blood but emotional and spiritual blood as well.