Finding Our Way Home

My sense is that in our generation, the Baby Boom, we are all halves as opposed to wholes. In the Sixties, the choices we faced were so drastic (war or peace) that each of us had to rupture in two.

Although for a while we may have adhered to extreme positions, most of us see the validity in the other side's opinions.

Since the way I think is to write, I'm perhaps more inconsistent than most. At a given moment, I can seem wildly leftist, and the next, contradictorily conservative. The truth, I suspect, is I'm both, and probably we all are.

An epiphany would be to realize we no longer need to choose. It's okay to embrace positions all along the political scale. Who's keeping score, anyway?

Probably the worst ideology I've experienced personally (having missed the Nazis and the Stalinists) is the politically-correct left. They keep score! There's an irony in those who strive to be "right" in this way.

I once gave a speech that offended a foundation supporter. She's never spoken to me since. I once made an offhand comment about hunting at a university; the other professors told me it was the most politically-incorrect thing I could have said. Examples go on and on. Think of an angry schoolmarm wagging her finger -- that's what the PC folks are like.

They assume a consensus of the virtuous.

I assume a process of debate, after which a more complex, layered consensus may or may not emerge.

A mutual friend invited me to dinner with a local conservative columnist, anticipating gleefully that there would be fireworks. He underestimated both of us; she and I became friends, and I later invited to her address my class at Stanford when she was a visiting journalist at the Hoover Institute.

Those who continue to cling to a sense that there is an "other" out there -- a different type of human being from us -- simply have not explored this world deeply enough.


***


Even that most frightful of creatures -- the Islamic fundamentalist -- has another side. Hiking through the very border country currently hiding Osama bin-laden and other al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders years ago, I was welcomed into villagers' homes and treated to the best meals they could muster. The poorest put a portion of food on the table for me that, had I eaten it all, would have meant their family would not be able to eat for a week.

Of course, I knew the score, and feigned satisfaction after only a few handfuls. (There were no utensils.)

These people are not the terrorists, of course. These are the people sheltering them. The terrorists are principally middle-class dropouts from Arabic countries (al-Qaeda), or Afghan orphans raised in Wahabi Madrassas without the benefit of female influence (Taliban).

The people housing them are not privy to the larger implications necessarily. Theirs is a simpler, deeper connection. My house is your house. This, along with tribal loyalty, is a fundamental building block of society in Pashtunistan.

Finding the bad guys first requires comprehending the society sheltering them. An American could conceivably just walk into the area, even today, and be warmly welcomed, as well. Problem is, few of them know that and even fewer would ever try it.

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