WHEN COUNTER-CULTURE IS CORRECT

What could be more counter-culture than to suggest we Americans don't love our liberty to the last drop of our blood...? But one of my favorite cynics so said, and I passionately agree with him. H.L. Mencken wrote: "The average man does not want to be free. He simply wants to be safe."

What makes this assertion so counter-culture is that it seems to defy and defile the noble bloodshed of all those who fought at Valley Forge, Gettysburg, Flanders Fields and Normandy. Furthermore, it sorta makes John Wayne and Harrison Ford look a little pretentious. But wait a minute. Would not America's heroes have preferred sleeping in their beds at home, rather than bleeding on these lands away?

Heroes don't necessarily do what they want to do, more what they need to do. So in between times of great urgency -- legitimate like Pearl Harbor and Illegitimate like Iraq -- peace, comfort and safety are our most human passions. However, what seems to divide us is exactly what and when there is great urgency.

Case-in-point: 9/11.

On that tragic day, America woke up to a calamity that many somehow found surprising. Surprising that others so hate us they would dare do something like this. [It may have corrected for all time the happy assumption that there are only two kinds of people in the world: Americans and those who would love to be Americans]. That this was a calamity is unquestionable. What was questionable is how to marshal and sublimate the nation's righteous rage.

No need to rummage through this 9-year-long national debate. Everyone has a side. However, Mencken's rule might be applied this way: If our total safety is at stake, then it calls for total response. If
this is not actually the case, then a modified response may be the wisest course. Think teenage gangs waging total neighborhood warfare, because they don't understand there are effective alternatives to the gun, alternative choices for beating your enemy, alternatives and not simply ultimatums.

Whatever a nation's scenarios may be, at home as well as abroad, Mencken's reading of our human nature sings true. And perhaps that melody line should be played before, not after, the gun. For in the last measure, the safety of our beds is no less a human desire than the sanctity of our blood...