No
matter how much a president loves his country, justice should be the
core value to sustain the harmony and trust in societies and no compromise to be made.
URL- http://nabsites.net/demo/texas-faith-should-leaders-love-their/
Texas Faith: Should leaders love their country more than their souls?
By Bill McKenzie / Editorial Columnist
Dallas Morning News, Published on February 5, 2012
New York Times columnist David Brooks touches upon this theme in this essay. Here’s one excerpt:
“In
the real world, a great leader is called upon to create a civilized
order for the city he serves. To create that order, to defeat the forces
of anarchy and savagery, the virtuous leader is compelled to do hard
things, to take, as it were, the sins of the situation upon himself.
“The
leader who does good things cannot always be good himself. Sometimes
bad acts produce good outcomes. Sometimes a leader has to love his
country more than his soul.”
That’s pretty disturbing. Should a
leader really love his country more than his soul? If so, does that mean
country should come before faith?
To me, this is one of the more
challenging parts of the intersection of religion and politics. I would
love to hear your thoughts about whether leaders must on occasion love
their country more than their soul.
Fourteen panelists contributed to this forum, to read the contributions from all the panelists, please visit – http://religionblog.dallasnews.com/2013/02/texas-faith-should-leaders-love-their-country-more-than-their-souls.html/
MIKE GHOUSE, President, Foundation for Pluralism and a Speaker on interfaith matters, diversity and pluralism
Do
the means justify the end? Both the politicians and spiritual masters
have made those decisions and have justified their actions. But there is
always a price to be paid for all such actions, either in the moral
deprivation of the society or the long-term destruction of justice.
When
it comes to justifying the means, the Second World War always jumps out
at us, and we continue to justify the bombing of Hiroshima-Nagasaki
and, of course, Germany. Even the anti-war pacifists among us justify it
to save greater number of lives, and in particular preventing the
annihilation of Jews in the Holocaust. The Torah and Qur’an share this
wisdom, “Saving a life is like saving the whole humanity.” With a tag
that killing one is like killing the whole humanity, have we been able
to balance between the two?
President Lincoln balanced the need
to keep the nation together for the right purpose, and it was difficult
on him to justify the war. Indeed, he loved America more than his soul.
He could have listened to his advisers and not gone to war and lived his
life. But the America he envisioned, which we benefit from today,
justified the means.
The drone attacks in Pakistan are killing
innocent civilians and creating more hatred towards us than taking the
individual bad guys out. In that case, the end does not justify the
means and we must speak out against this nonsense.
The unjust
Bush war had its price, which we will continue to pay in terms of
carrying the spiritual burden of mass killings of the innocent and
destruction of the nations who had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks
on us. President Bush was a revenge-seeking machine rather than someone
who wanted justice.
Unfortunately, not all people feel that way,
but the torch bearers of the conscience will live through it and
question ourselves for not protesting the war that brought untold
miseries to others and us in terms of unemployment, foreclosures,
suicides among our soldiers and plain destruction of our nation.
Animals
settle their disputes by locking their horns or tearing each other
apart. Humans, instead, were endowed with the ability to dialogue and
bring resolutions to the conflict.
No matter how much a president
loves his country, justice should be the core value that sustains the
harmony and trust in societies.
Additional writing:
Of course, how many Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist leaders follow their religion?
Quran
condemns offensive war, and no one is to wage a war against the other,
unless it is in self-defense. The guidance even extends to the
individuals, when someone throws you out of your own home forcibly,
harasses you and your family, then you have a right to search, and
wherever you can find them on your property, you have a right to shoot
(American Terms) the invader and be not responsible for it. It further
adds, if the intruded begs for mercy, he should be given a chance, for
God loves those who forgive and create harmony in the society.
I
believe in the Reagan Doctrine, peace through strength, use the
strength to bring peace. Animals settle their disputes by locking their
horns or tearing each other, humans were not given the horns to do the
same, and instead, they were endowed with the ability to dialogue and
bring resolutions to the conflict. Reagan did that successfully.
Post morteming the events, no matter how much a president loves his country, justice should be the core value.
……. Mike Ghouse is a speaker, thinker and a
writer on pluralism, politics, peace, Islam, Israel, India, interfaith, and cohesion at work
place. He is committed to building a Cohesive America and offers
pluralistic solutions on issues of the day at www.TheGhousediary.com. He believes in
Standing up for others
and has done that throughout his life as an activist. Mike has a presence on
national and local TV, Radio and Print Media. He is a frequent guest on Sean Hannity show on
Fox TV, and a commentator on national radio networks, he contributes weekly to
the Texas Faith Column at Dallas
Morning News; fortnightly at Huffington post; and
several other periodicals across the world. His personal site www.MikeGhouse.net indexes all his work
through many links.