Making scapegoats has never resulted in solutions

Making scapegoats has never resulted in solutions

May 17, 2001

'Smatter of Fact
By Katharhynn Heidelberg

Society is rife with complicated problems. It is appropriate to come to terms with them, yet it is amazing how some (on both sides of any issue) generalize, judge and demonize anything smacking of "the other."

Sounds ominous, doesn’t it? The...(dum-da-dum!)... other. Rest easy. Life has never been free of the "the other," yet society has plugged merrily on in spite of — and at times because of — "them."

Socrates was a great philosopher. We remember this. We especially remember how he died. What we forget is that he died because his government felt his philosophy was subversive — specifically, that it seduced the youth of Athens away from their religion and politics.

Today, there are those who also believe our youth have been lured away by the siren call of subversive agendas, and, like the Athenian government, would prefer "the other" did not exist. They need to put down the hemlock, take off the rose-colored glasses and give history a hard look.

People "back then" were no less selfish, hedonistic or even immoral than some are now. Various Roman chroniclers, like Suetonius, recounted the depravities of certain Roman emperors, including rather graphic sexual ones. The monk Gildas accused political and religious leaders of early medieval Britain of deeds that would turn a blush on Bill Clinton’s cheek. Gildas also complained that the Britons of his day weren’t nearly so moral and God-fearing as the preceding generation had been.

Long before the allegedly licentious 1960s, Rodrigo Borgia not only had mistresses and illegitimate children, but went out of his way to assure that they became powerful and wealthy. The vehicle for his schemes? The papacy, which he ran like a personal kingdom as Pope Alexander VI.

Some might remember his son, Cesare Borgia, on whom Machiavelli’s The Prince is based. What can Cesare’s grasping, greedy behavior be blamed on? The moral particulars of his parentage, or the personal choices of a man who certainly knew the difference between right and wrong?

History is full of imperfection. It is also full of contradictions to the morality-ensures-utopia belief some hold dear.

The 17th-century citizens of Salem were moral to a fault. The Bible and prayer were part of their everyday activities. Alas, they are remembered, not for any exemplary moral beliefs, but for their failure to apply either morality or logic when that first young voice shouted "witch!".

Klara Hitler was obsessively devoted to a little boy named Adolf. She was a stay-at-home wife, and appeared to have no feminist leanings. This did not prevent her son’s evil; some scholars even argue that her devotion contributed to his megalomania.

On the flip side, we might remember that the supposedly willful, selfish young adults of the 1960s were brought up by the direct product of "the Greatest Generation." Not all members of today’s Generation X are hedonistic, God-hating, femi-Nazi communists whose brains are on permanent disconnect, thanks to the deliberate schemes of evil, immoral teachers. Most of us actually have the intelligence to form opinions quite without help.

The logic behind making scapegoats of the "other" simply does not hold up against history. There really is no new thing under the sun. This is not an excuse for every immoral act, however, it does prove "the others" will not destroy humankind. Humankind carries on. It is the best of times; it is the worst of times, and it has always been thus.

We should all strive to be upright, fair, responsible and law-abiding. But the failure of some to do so can hardly be exclusively blamed on the personal lives of other people.

Simply put, glorifying the past and vilifying the present offers no sort of solution. If this sort of thinking is subversive, or smacks of questionable activism, I’ve only one thing to say: Praise the Lord and pass the hemlock.