A weblog by Jonathan Ali
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| Notes from a small island A weblog by Jonathan Ali |
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Saturday, April 26, 2003 "That a society should actually embody its own professed principles is a utopian standard, in the sense that moral principles contradict the way things really are - and always will be. How things really are - and always will be - is neither all-evil nor all-good but deficient, inconsistent, inferior. Principles invite us to do something about the morass of contradictions in which we function morally. Principles invite us to clean up our act; to become intolerant of moral laxity and compromise and cowardice and the turning away from what is upsetting: that secret gnawing of the heart that tells us that what we are doing is not right, and so counsels us that we'd be better off just not thinking about it." - From "The Power of Principle" a brilliant essay by Susan Sontag, in today's UK Guardian Review, and adapted from a speech Sontag gave just over a month ago, at the presentation of an award to the chairman of a group of Jewish soldiers, the Yesh Gvul, which refuses to serve beyond Israel's 1967 borders. This essay, better than most everything I've read on recent events, cogently and clinically sets out the arguments against the yet-to-be-concluded war in Iraq, as well as Israel's continued occupation of the Palestinian Territories. posted by Jonathan | 1:41 PM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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