Sunday, June 6, 2010

20100606.2152

I realize that I am fairly late in posting this. I can only plead the excuse that I have been a bit ill for the past few days. It is not anything major, but it does put me a bit out of my element.

The major event of the day is, to once again betray my prejudices, the anniversary of the D-Day landings at Normandy during WWII. Sixty-six years ago, the largest amphibious assault in recorded history was launched. Although many thousands died in that attack, their deaths ultimately led to the overthrow of one of the most evil men in history.

And so, though it is a small thing, such thanks as I have to give I give to them. God bless and keep them.

Of more personal importance to me is another anniversary marked today. In 1981, my parents picked this day to become husband and wife. Today, they are still happily married, and the home and family that June 6, 1981, afforded me are at the root of my being.

I am hardly ungrateful for that.

I am also far from ungrateful that I am in a position to be able to spend my evenings contemplating academic readings or offering my opinions on the world. I could be spending these moments frantically searching to find enough food to put on the table, or money to buy it. I could be trying to escape predation of one sort or another. I know that many are in such situations, and I thank the Almighty daily that I am not among them.

I am in a position of privilege. And I am human enough that I hope to see that privilege maintained; who among us does not like to keep what we have?

But I do some small things to aid the situation. I do give to a number of charities. And my work as a teacher, particularly in that such work services traditionally underprivileged populations, tends to aid those who are in disadvantaged positions to attain some form of advantage.

It is good work, I think, and worthy. And even if I do not raise my hand in anger or slay the enemies of a nation or of cross-national human concerns, I work in my own small way to ensure that the promises of an open society, one in which people are given the opportunity to accomplish what it is in them to do, one in which the various things for which we discriminate against people cease to matter--save only a very few.

For though I believe that a person's race, gender, sexuality, religious stance or lack thereof, socio-economic status, and condition of ability do not determine a person's worth, I am not about to say that a person who is lazy is deserving of esteem. Those who seek to advance themselves at the expense of others--not by building upon their accomplishments but by willfully and knowingly stealing them for their own--should be condemned. And those who will say that the endeavor of the expansion of human knowledge in which I and many others are engaged is a facile folly earn nothing but my enmity.

Does such a statement make of me a hypocrite? Perhaps, but as I have before noted, if I am, I am in fine and ample company.

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