It seems disconjugate to condemn primitive thinking, as below, and then launch into
Catilinian calumny of Robert McNamara, the former Secretary of Defense of the United States.
Some years ago, an apology would not be needed. Robert McNamara was seen as an awful person a generation ago. But America has perfected the art of Political Redemption which, coupled with the insectile attention span of most citizens, allows us to be benignly puzzled by all the fuss about this old man. As long as we perfect the skill of forgetting wickedness, thus will it give us the gift of repeating it.
George Santayana thought that the forgetting was due to mere accident and ignorance; it is not. That which is loathsome may either be cleansed through expiation, or trundled along with, neglected until the Last of Days.
Somewhere in the guilt assuaged by the fixation of magnetic Chinese "SUPPORT THE TROOPS" bumper stickers, is the weight of the burden lain down upon us by the Best and Brightest. Some hideous thing has been stuffed under, mouldering - and we have not done the Last Thing to end it.
Something happened between the Nüremberg trials and the McCarthy hearings that kindled some small spark, that has slowly been nurtured and burst into flame. It consumes one of our greatest treasures - the American Conscience. Were the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution to burst forth into fire and be consumed to ashes, in our National Archive, no patriot would long suffer the loss of those parchments - for the parchment is a thing, and the ideals are what matter. But the death of the Conscience? Nobody mourns.
The
Examination of Conscience is a due and proper ritual in Catholicism. It is a ritual which ought to persist, even in the separation of the non-Catholic Christian sects, for it is a worthy thing in and of its own right. It is is the element of the
Act of Contrition, an action by which one remedies one's discoveries. For those with a more sturdy and energetic pursuit of their Christian faith, there are the
Exercises of
Loyola, which enable a more thorough spiritual hygeine.
These concepts are absurd in America, as is the fundamental concept of Conscience itself. You win if you get away with it. But the predominance of Will over Conscience will always fail, for it takes an absolute and unbreakable Will to dominate; and in any mortal person, the will can flag. Those without conscience, whom we often refer to as
psychopaths, often have such such power of will so as to dominate others. History has catalogued them; they all, eventually fail. Whether there is a fellow with such sapient evil and power of will to carry on an eternal struggle of Will, that is in the province of theology. Suffice it to say that we have chosen Will over Conscience, and we bear the marks of it.
Some have even wandered into the understanding of the group psychology of will, conscience and societal evil. I offer
Scott Peck and Lobaczewski as references in the study of
ponerology.
With the passing of McNamara, we pretend, so goes this burden of guilt. But the damage runs greater than the few dead in Vietnam, or even the more who were wounded, or the many Vietnam vets who were spat on and despised and homeless. The embarrassment and failure of the Generation of the Baby Boomers derives from his war. This could have been the greatest generation in America. Now, perhaps, it will go down in history as its assassin, America's
Brutus, condemned to Dante's
Ninth Circle of Hell for those who have destroyed Republics.
Grief and meditation should be foremost in the passing of this awful man; not for him, but for the Republic.
