In the almost two months since the Sept. 11 terrorist strikes at New York and Washington, few things about my fellow citizens’ range of reactions to that horror have so bothered me as the recent circus in Madison.
Perhaps the Madison School Board overreacted a bit by banning the daily recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in classrooms — a policy it reversed after massive protests. I myself don’t think so.
The recent state law mandating that schools offer either the Pledge or the national anthem daily smacks of an attempt to force-feed patriotism á la such societies as the former Soviet Union. Moreover, the Pledge with the words “under God” added in the 1950s has become a kind of prayer, and officially sanctioned prayers don’t belong in public schools. While those children who don’t want to say the Pledge can decline, they inevitably stand out and can be subjected to the kind of social “tyranny of the majority” that should not be even implicitly authorized by government bodies.
However, I doubt the board’s members made their decision for that reason. They likely were motivated by the simple and praiseworthy desire to be courteous to all the district’s students and parents, including those who find the Pledge problematic.
The people who disagreed with the decision, locally and nationally, should have had the same sense of courtesy, should have had the ability to perceive and acknowledge that the board members’ motives were honorable; and therefore should have expressed opposition, however vehement, with courtesy. Instead, they became almost a howling mob, an archetypal display of democracy and patriotism at their worst.
This spectacle brought several thoughts to my mind. First, the great Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote to the effect that to get angry is easy; but to get angry over the right things, in the right amount and in the right way is not easy. Anger may be even harder to control when mixed with or sparked by feelings of fear and helplessness, both of which have permeated the country since Sept. 11. Still, that’s no excuse; the Pledge ban and those who sought it are not the enemy; and the amount of anger displayed at them was disproportionate and unjustified.
Why? That leads to the second thought that I learned during my religious education: “idolatry” doesn’t just mean praying or sacrificing to statues of gods and goddesses. Excessive reverence for or emotional investment in anything that is not God — money, art, success, a pop culture star or charismatic political leader, a symbol like a flag, even a good cause or a country — can be considered idol worship in Judaism, my teachers said.
Maybe this concept influenced me in ways my teachers might not have approved. I regard myself as more a secular than religious Jew when it comes to the idea of God.
But I totally oppose “idolatry” in the sense that I believe nothing deserves total, unthinking, uncritical allegiance and support, not even causes or ideas I agree with. Perhaps especially not the latter, since that is exactly where the temptation is greatest to become a self-righteous, unthinking idol-worshipper who forgets or refuses to admit that everything in human life is imperfect and needs constructive criticism. I admit I don’t always live up to that ideal, but it remains my ideal.
The temptation to worship idols did not die with the ancient, polytheistic Roman empire. What we saw in Madison was nothing short of an outburst of idolatry — of thinking that a symbol is more important than substance or than people; of thinking that rote recitation of words proclaiming patriotism equals patriotism and opposition to that act equals opposition to patriotism; of thinking that patriotism now is such an absolutely good thing that any action in its name is automatically beyond criticism. It isn’t. Even after Sept. 11, there are values and virtues as and more important.
The Madison events revealed a potential other temptation as well, leading to the third thought. We all like to believe our enemies have nothing in common with us, not even humanity. Yet the temptation to become a totalitarian who thinks everybody should think and live in the same way, and those who disagree should be forced, hurt or destroyed — exists in this country and in ourselves every bit as much as in the Arab/Muslim world.
It exists in the “religious right” figures, Revs. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, who tried to blame the Sept. 11 attacks on U.S. secular culture. And it has tended to run rampant in the United States in times of national emergency or war — see Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” for abundant examples.
The Talmud and other Jewish texts talk about how we all have inclinations to good and evil. In my own experience and reading of history, the evil inclinations toward idolatry and totalitarianism often are most seductive when they mix with desires to do something otherwise good, like uphold one’s religion or defend one’s country.
The German philosopher Friederich Nietzche said it best: “When one fights a monster, one must take care that one does not oneself become a monster.”
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