Where Did Once Brave America Go? — Professor Michael Brenner on the “Unmanly” Prevalence of Fear and Denial in the United States

© 2013 Peter Free

 

18 February 2013

 

 

Citation — to Michael Brenner’s insight into the current state of American affairs

 

Michal Brenner, The (Very) Few Proud and Brave, Huffington Post (18 February 2013)

  

Why I draw attention to Professor Brenner’s essay

 

I have repeatedly pointed to excessive fear as the cause of the American public’s two-fold willingness:

 

(a) to collaterally kill other Peoples, without moral justification,

 

and

 

(b) to grossly reduce some of our own freedoms at home.

 

Dr. Brenner agrees — in a short essay that is worth reading for people, who are brave enough to confront our cultural infatuation with hypocrisy.

 

 

Who is Michael Brenner — and why might we care what he thinks?

 

Among many other accomplishments, Dr. Brenner is Professor of International Affairs at the University of Pittsburg.

 

His fact-supported essay contributes another straw to the pile of evidence that asks that we look more closely at our nation’s behavior and the role we play in supporting its arguable evils.

 

 

Disastrous American policies run amuck

 

Professor Brenan points out that:

 

 

Assassination of American citizens by presidential dictate, blanket suspension of habeas corpus -- indefinitely, massive wiretapping and surveillance with and without warrant, torture as the official policy of the United States government -- these are trademarks of the "war on terror" pursued since 9/11.

 

The extraordinary trashing of our cherished civil liberties and ethical standards is matched by the stunning acceptance of these actions by our political class, by our professional elites, by the populace.

 

Approval, not just passive acceptance, is the most common attitude.

 

© 2013 Michal Brenner, The (Very) Few Proud and Brave, Huffington Post (18 February 2013)

  

Brenner explains

 

Professor Brenner points out that the War on Terror has not gone well in sustaining professed American values regarding freedom and human rights.

 

Iraq (and now Afghanistan) did not welcome American interference over the long haul, and peace and prosperity have not been the outcome of American intervention.

 

Where America once might have been admired for its virtue, today “most of the world dislikes/hates us” and the terrorist threat continues.  “We torture and abuse others,” and “America’s moral leadership is gone.”

 

Brenner alleges that our two latest presidents deceived us, and the trust central to successful democracy has been shattered.  We cooperated in the erosion of honor and freedom by panicking “in an unmanly manner” and undercutting Liberty in response.

 

 

The root cause of our misguided national behavior? — scaredy-cats

 

Fear sucks ethical spine away:

 

 

An America that is not able, that is not moral, that is not smart, that lies, that lies to itself -- that America is incompatible with the myths that sustain us.

 

Therefore, better that the truth not be told.

 

We are now a people whose timidity in acknowledging their failings is fear by another name.

 

© 2013 Michal Brenner, The (Very) Few Proud and Brave, Huffington Post (18 February 2013) (paragraph split)

  

The moral? — Unacknowledged fear is corrosive

 

Liberty’s Lamp dims in the fog of yellow-bellied policies.

 

We send our bravest to do the bidding of our most cowardly.