Lane von Herzen: The Moral Imperative in the Face of Loss

My Third Novel's Conclusion, My Heartbreak

My heart begins to break when I think about completing this particular book -- because this narrative has sustained me like no other story I've known. It's both more personal and more universal than my other works. But beyond memory and archetype, it's a cri-de-coeur about needing to become the person one is destined to be. And in the writing, I have met my own life's work, my own fated journey -- having the sense all the while that the pages are suffused with a resonance, an energy, an electrified field that defies explanation. Writers hope and pray to be overtaken by a work in this way -- to be conscripted into passionate service of a profound story. To experience it even once in a lifetime seems a great privilege. I still have several months before this novel is complete, and this constitutes my reprieve. Because I'm not ready for the beauty to end.

Sunday, February 19, 2023

The Moral Imperative in the Face of Loss

I am re-publishing here a post I first wrote on November 27, 2022.

I believe that solemn reflection is necessary in the face of the gratuitous, targeted loss of those who ought to have helped define our future.

In their absence, it is necessary to hold fast to the truth of their worth.

Democracy must be earned and re-earned by our insistence on one another's inviolable human rights, by our determination to protect one another from harm, by our commitment to allow a multiplicity of respectful voices to debate and define the course of freedom within Americans' Constitutional governance.

It is the bonds of fellowship, the ties of benevolence, the shared commitment to one another's lives that defines the United States as a nation of citizens possessing both principle and generosity of spirit.

The rule of law must be upheld alongside our compassion if we are to approach our potential as a just and honorable society.

I believe we have that capacity, because President Biden personifies that spirit as our eminently just and honorable Commander-in-Chief.

It is up to us as Americans to insist on this same expression of ethics and goodwill within the national security personnel and law enforcement officers who have vowed to defend our Constitution and our communities.

Our fortitude as a nation is defined by our individual character as Americans.

Our courage, our integrity, our honesty, our compassion, our insistence on the truth, our defense of one another's human rights, our goodness -- these qualities are not democracy's afterthought; they are democracy's necessity.

Lane MacWilliams

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One of the greatest tragedies of covert war, as it appears to have been waged by the far right throughout history, and perhaps in our own time as I write these words, is that countless victims never understand the objectives of their assailants.

They simply wish to live, and to live in peace.

Yet, that privilege is denied to them, and often denied violently, and without warning.

During World War II, Adolf Eichmann negotiated in excruciating detail with the Jews concerning the details of their longed-for emigrations to safer countries. Yet, all of these mediations were a cruel ruse to enlist their cooperation in their own demise. Their hopes for a safe destination ensured their willingness to board trains in an orderly fashion. By the time they reached the concentration camps, perhaps the bitterness of Eichmann's deceit had caught up to them. We cannot know the pain of their disillusion. These voices were lost to us, through no fault of their own.

But I am here to articulate the moral imperative: that the murder of innocents can never be a political stratagem, a prerogative of those who wield the public trust, or an expediency on the path to power.

To quote from Argentine prosecutor Julio Strassera, "Sadism is not a political ideology, nor a war strategy, but instead a moral perversion."

When violence has been wielded against law-abiding American citizens with no capacity to defend themselves -- with no awareness that such defense might be required of them -- with no protection in their most vulnerable hour -- it is incumbent upon good people to re-establish the rule of law.

Calm insistence is required of us, despite the horrors such unconscionable acts may incite within our hearts and minds. Calm insistence on the facts. Calm insistence on the truth. Calm insistence on the Constitution. Calm insistence on justice.

If certain factions of the U.S. security agencies have perpetrated human rights violations against law-abiding American citizens for anti-democratic objectives, let us have the courage to acknowledge those crimes even as we grieve the loss of lives that cannot be replaced.

The "casualties" of the far right are not faceless, nameless, numbered "targets."

They are human beings. Irreplaceable. Invaluable. And vital to our future.

Would that we could have assured them of the dignity, the privacy, and the safety they so thoroughly deserved.

Perhaps the force of our grief can impel us to assure others that these rights, so recklessly imperiled, will now be reclaimed.