A color for all the rest of us

I came back from a brief vacation feeling rested and almost cheerful and bumped into a reader’s suggestion that I be fired: Too liberal.

It was a copy of an e-mail to the editor of The Times that contained three or four ways the newspaper could be improved. My dismissal was No. 1 on the list, which, I suppose, ought to impress me with its standing.

I refer to him as a reader because he writes occasionally in a subdued rage whenever I’ve a mind to straighten out the world in 800 or so words. While others may disagree, they lack his cold intent to save America from, well, me.

To the best of my knowledge, the editor has taken no action on the idea of defrocking me. My desk is still here and my space is still here and I’m still here. One must therefore assume that he is disregarding the suggestion or that he simply hasn’t gotten around to doing anything about it.

Meanwhile, I look upon the e-mail as yet another instance of the widening gap in our culture between the reds and the blues, those fueled by the notion of creating a better world and those who would create a different world.

You will notice that I didn’t isolate either group as liberal or conservative, because I see nothing essentially wrong with either political cant. Thank God for those who believe in some traditional American values and thank God for those who push to open new intellectual vistas.

You can be a little of everything if your mind is receptive to new ideas, understanding that progress is tempered with caution, and intelligence filtered through knowledge.

What we’re facing today, I think, is a group of people who are driven by the need to silence the voices that question their motives. Led by a born-again fundamentalist and manipulated by those whose god is power, an army of demagogues is determined to alter the nature of our freedoms to fit their needs.

Challenge that intent and they’ll damn you as a “liberal,” a word they have twisted to define one who is out to transform America into an atheistic culture. Communism was once the Godless enemy of the state and, led by a cadre of vengeful politicians, we set out to eliminate them, destroying innocent lives in our righteous quest. It was a sad epoch in freedom’s history and, it appears, we have learned nothing from it.

God has never been more popular than he is today, emerging in the debate over abortion as the final arbiter of morality as seen by the religious right. They are content in the knowledge that God has directed them, and those who defy them are agents of the devil.

In a secular world, that credence fires the passions of the mob and the inclination of the power seekers, and what might begin as a belief becomes an unholy mission.

Dwight Eisenhower warned us about the military/industrial complex, and now we have the military/industrial/political/fundamentalist coalition that seeks to silence debate, control the courts, infiltrate our privacies and alter the process of free thought. Can an auto-da-fe be far behind?

Exacerbating the condition has been the attack that brought down the twin towers, and the war in Iraq that followed. A new enemy has emerged, and it is that shadowy, often ill-defined army of terrorists that has enhanced the efforts of the right to save us from ourselves. If civil liberties are trampled in the process, it’s only for our own good. In a world where God is facing off with Allah, Christianity needs every weapon available to uphold its holiness, even if it means jailing, torturing or bombing the bejesus out of someone.

Stand in the way of the march and suffer the consequences.

I’ve never actually considered myself a liberal. I’ve never hugged a tree or kissed a dolphin. I’m not a conservative either. Generals don’t impress me and the bare female breasts of classical statues don’t offend me.

There ought to be something between what Barry Goldwater and John Kennedy stood for, a common ground where many of us in-betweens could gather and calmly debate the issues of the day, from war to the boll weevil. We’d hoist a beer maybe or mix up a batch of martinis and laugh about ourselves while celebrating who we are and what we have in this sweet land of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.

I’m one of the in-betweens, a guy from East Oakland with average intelligence and a journeyman’s instinct to perceive when something’s going wrong, and I’m sensing now that something is very wrong. I feel the need to tell someone about it, to warn them, the way we pointed out land mines and enemy snipers to each other in Korea.

The guy who sent the e-mail to my boss is not likely to get me canned. When I leave, I’ll walk away whistling, content that I’ve done the job I should have been doing, with conscience and conviction.

If that makes me a liberal, then sit me to the left of the eagle’s wing and we’ll wave to each other across the smoky room.

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Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He’s at [email protected].