The US empire has never tried to kill me and al-Qaeda could easily set off a bomb in Chicago killing myself, my loved ones and most people I know. Plus al-Qaeda's stated aim is there be but one religion. In other words, you're either with them or against them, according to *them.* [clip]
>I think people in the US need to realize they are going to be held
>personally responsible for their government's actions in the
>world. And worse. If we don't mount a serious resistance to those
>policies in whatever way we can, we are essentially complicit in
>them. It is passed due that we put US Empire on the table and figure
>out where we stand in relation to it, all the way down.
>
>Israel isn't a bad example here, in the sense that people in Israel
>can be part of the peace movement and active in resisting military
>service in the occupation and still get blown up. Are they then
>supposed to join the settlements on the West Bank and carry an Uzi?
>Well that's obviously up to whoever is effected. But in general no,
>not that either.
from an interview with the much-admired leftwinger Hitchens:
interviewer: You might have just answered my next question, but…Ugrei moves from criticizing the self-conceived innocence of the collective to her own acceptance of universal guilt, which is, in her case, a dissident stance. But do you think that that stance is possibly quiescence masquerading as bravery, or too much to take on?
Hitchens: Yeah, I think so. I suspect it a bit, and I suspect it in the same way that I suspect religious concepts like that of original sin, for example. It reminds me too much of that. The line, "we are all guilty," or "we are all responsible," used to be taken a lot by intellectuals of the left. There was something sickly about that, I found. I think I could decently repudiate my responsibility: I wouldn’t ever have desired such a thing, and I don’t think that anything I’ve said or done contributed to it. And it reminded me of the thing that I’m always most at war with, which is the religious mentality, with its implicit, if not explicit, authoritarianism. Because if we’re all guilty, then we all have to be punished: and someone has to be around to lay down the law, and presume to know it and enforce it. That’s giving away far too much for me, at the very beginning.
So something in me rebels against that. I think, if the position of the independent mind, or writer, means anything at all, it means acceptance of individual responsibility: otherwise, what are you an example of? In every respect. I say in my book, I don’t like living for a minute in a state of affairs where the government can treat me as disposable by resorting to thermonuclear weapons. I don ’t grant them the right to do that, to kill everybody—and on my behalf, or including me. And in the same way, I hate the idea—that many people believe, possibly a majority of people believe—that I’ve been saved by a human sacrifice that I didn’t ask for, and took place a long time before I was born. My permission wasn’t solicited for this…rescue operation. Nor, I’m sure, were any others’. They even say, "well, you know, you may not care about Jesus, but he cares about you," as if I have no say in the matter. I don’t like anything that reminds me of those tones of voice; I’ve a natural revulsion to it. And, I think, a slight suspicion for people who don’t. So, against collectivization. And universal guilt is another such…it’s a softer instance of it, but it’s an instance of it. ----------
http://www.canonmagazine.org/Features_HtichensInterview.htm
Peter