The Zeitgeist

Pictured Above, Border Agents Ramos and Compean

The zeitgeist, the spirit of a people, the spirit of a time, is rarely defined by a single event.

Rather, various occurences serve as small pieces that astute observers gather to form a mosaic, that point to the cultural and spiritual state of a nation.

Many of the pieces that I have gathered point to the lack of faith, love and loyalty that a large segment of America's elite, hold towards the United States. Many of these occurences embody an inverted sense of right and wrong that harkens me to the Talmudic Verse, Qohelet Raba, 7:16

"Kol mi shena`asa rahaman bimqom akhzari
Sof shena`asa akhzari bimqom rahaman."

Which is roughly translated as:

"Those who are kind to the cruel, in the end will be cruel to the kind."

One event that comes to mind is the arrest and imprisonment of Border Patrol Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean for shooting a Mexican drug smuggler, in his buttocks, with 800 lbs of marijuana. After 2 years of intense public pressure, GW Bush commuted their sentences in his final days in office. Most shamefully, the government not only failed to prosecute the trafficker, but also promised permanent legal status in exchange for his testimony against the officers.

Interestingly when I spoke with Mexican friends of mine about this incident, they were simply amazed that any government would prosecute its own law enforcement agents for an assault on a drug trafficker who had violating its sovereignty. They could not fathom how anyone could be so kind to such a loathsome individual and so cruel to people who were risking their lives to protect their country. And on a broader level, it was self evident to them that our misplaced kindness surely is eroding our law enforcement capacity, which is cruel to law abiding citizens who are robbed of their sense of safety and security.

While they did not believe that one should automatically and unconditionally support one's countrymen in a dispute, they found it unsettling how it's not the 1st instinct of some members of the American elite to support their country and their people. This is not a question of mindless loyalty, it is one of values. Even the great Socrates saw the problems of unconditionally placing "universal values" over the value of love and loyalty for one's one people, when he criticized Euthyphro's desire to prosecute his own father for the murder of a criminal. In the case of dictatorships patriotism is usually the expression of dark, undemocratic impulses. But, in the case of the United States, it is the love and affirmation of positive values and visions, of freedom and opportunity.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/07/17/Dobbs.July18/index.html

http://rohrabacher.house.gov/UploadedFiles/NBPC%20rebuttal_to_sutton.pdf


http://ramos-compean.blogspot.com/





http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthyphro