Christine Flowers (commentary, March 1) bemoans the fact that the United States is splintering off into selfish little tribes who are no longer willing to sacrifice their lives to help keep the rest of the world from tumbling into tyranny. She’s no moderate, she says, so what does that make her… an activist, a zealot, a fanatic? Is she willing to take another person’s life or even offer up her own in pursuit of “immoderation”?
Ms. Flowers, you are “a voice of one crying out in the wilderness.” The problem is nobody is paying attention. I doubt those you have unfriended will miss a beat. They might even feel some respite from your incessant griping and be glad for it.
A reporter once asked me if I, as an Armenian, was bothered by the fact that so many Armenians were killed by the Turks during World War I. It happened, I told her, that much I knew just from looking at the photographs. Didn’t I care, she asked. I looked straight at her and replied, no. She was stunned and asked me what was wrong with me. I asked her to give me one reason why I should care, and just how that caring should be manifested in my own life.
Should I build a time machine and return to the past to prevent it from happening (which would include discouraging certain Armenian leaders from performing acts of sedition, thus instigating acts of treason against the Turkish government during a time of war, and from within Turkey itself)? Should I join one of the Armenian groups who hate Turks and live their lives in a perpetual state of rage and misery (some making it their very identity as a race — some life, huh)? Well, I asked her, what would she have me do? You should do everything in your power to prevent such things from ever happening again, she replied. No, I countered. I will not devote my life to hopeless “crusades.” I’ll let people like her do it. She scowled at me. Actually, it was more of a glare, and I had to shield my eyes, bloody do-gooder. I think she will die with that scowl on her face, but that’s her problem.
The world as we know it, and the countries of which it is comprised, has existed for ages. The relationships between those countries, whether friendly or hostile, also go back ages. The United States of America was founded by those who had had enough of that world and came here to start a new, and hopefully “better” world. That’s all fine and dandy, but I think it just a bit ludicrous, if not outright hypocritical, for us to go about trying to “correct” all of the “wrongs” of the “old world” while still practicing so many “wrongs” against our own right here in our “new world.” So get your own “house in order” and you just might get my attention, Ms. Flowers.
Arthur Saginian
Santa Clarita
