Susan Sontag in the New Yorker (September 24) said that the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was the consequence of actions by "the world’s self-proclaimed superpower." Daniel Maguire of Marquette University writing in Catholic New Times (October 7) characterized the American response as "the vapid answer of an arrogant national culture which has lost its talent for healthy guilt." For some leftist critics of U. S. policy, September 11 was punishment for the cardinal sin of power and pride reflecting Lord Acton’s dictum that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
But consider the obverse of Acton’s terse observation: powerlessness corrupts and absolute powerlessness corrupts absolutely. It is a commonplace that powerlessness leads to social pathologies such as addiction and crime. Just as suicide may be the final capitulation to personal powerlessness, terrorism may be the ultimate nihilistic political act. Terrorism may be the absolute corruption of absolute powerlessness.
We feel ill at ease thinking that powerlessness corrupts because we assume that corruption occurs only where there is some power to do good. The powerful could do good but, being corrupt, they use power in the wrong way. The powerless lack capacity to do almost anything and so their destructive acts are regarded as mere matters of compulsion. However one might refine these observations about the corruptions of power and the compulsions of powerlessness, the two slogans sum up a certain pessimism about human behavior. From a Christian standpoint, it may be no more than a reminder of the pervasiveness of sin across the spectrum of power and powerlessness.
If slogans about power and powerlessness express a somber view of human history, it is illuminating to see how they fail in sacred history. In the case of the divine, absolute power does not corrupt absolutely because God is absolute power and absolutely good. In the Christian story, the obverse proposition is also rejected. The story of Jesus of Nazareth shows that absolute powerlessness does not corrupt absolutely. Living in a society dominated by an arrogant and ruthless superpower, Jesus rejects the terrorist tactics of the Zealots. On the cross Jesus is revealed as absolutely powerless-he even asks whether God has forsaken him. Forsaken, he cannot and does not call for God’s vengeance; rather, he asks that his persecutors be forgiven. If God as absolute power is good, Jesus crucified as absolute powerlessness is also good. That he resists the all-too-human compulsions or corruptions of powerlessness could be sign enough that his was a divine life.
It does not take great insight or effort to catalogue the failures of American culture and political policy. No doubt many of the sins of the state arise from the blindness of power, but for all that this superpower is not supercorrupt. The United States is not "the Great Satan." Our domestic critics see the United States as a perverse superpower in concluding that we could be that superlatively wicked, that any nation could be that good at being bad.
Given the temptations of power and powerlessness, one could characterize the right and left critics of our response as follows. The right militarists, impressed by the power of all our shiny weapons, are frustrated that they are not used to eliminate the foreign bastards who are threatening the country. The left intellectuals, impressed by the power of their bright ideas, are frustrated that these ideas are not used to eliminate the domestic boobs who are running the country. What interests me is how the self-proclaimed powerlessness of the left intellectuals results in a sort of terrorism of the very concepts that are essential to any reasonable discussion of ethics and politics.
Let me offer one egregious comparison. Susan Sontag has been roundly criticized for rejecting the characterization of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon as "cowardly acts." On the contrary, she argued, the "pilots" of the planes were courageous, willing to give their lives for a cause. She contrasted them to U.S. pilots who bomb whole cities from the safe impunity of thirty thousand feet. There is something to be said for her view-but not much!
Aristotle had it right when he said that virtue was a mean between excess and defect. One opposite to courage is cowardice, but another is rashness, foolhardiness. It is possible to have too little fear as well as too much. How do we decide? Aristotle again: "as the person of ethical wisdom would decide." Religious fanaticism overrides ethical wisdom so that the truly fearful-killing the innocent-becomes not fearful at all. If the terrorist pilots were courageous, so were the youngsters who carefully planned and executed the attacks at Columbine High School.
The current situation for the United States poses special temptations for Christians. Hanging the country on the framework of sacred history can cast America as either the Great Satan superpower or the Suffering Servant who should refuse power. Realistically, the country is not the former, and it is doubtful that it could or should pretend to the latter. Virtue in this case will be "in the middle" between excess and defect of power. We should hope for ethical wisdom to discern the mean.
