Embracing the Immoral, Dirty Hands

Watching Ronald Reagan's inaugural speech a few weeks ago in section made me think about the freedoms and liberties we enjoy as citizens of the United States.  I couldn't help but think of various watershed moments such as declaring our independence, fighting for civil rights, winning World War II, etc. that have shaped our nation into what it is today.  I think we can all agree that the United States is a place in which we as citizens are relatively free to pursue our own interests, especially in comparison to many third world countries.  This made me start thinking about the actions that we as a nation had to undertake in order to achieve these rights.  For instance, I thought about the atomic bombs we dropped on Japanese cities in order to win WWII and protect the safety of our citizens.

Now these atomic bombs obliterated the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and killed hundreds of thousands of people living in these places. In and of itself these seem like horrible crimes, but considering the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the impending danger of Japan striking again, these crimes were necessary to put an end to the war.  And this made it crystal clear to me that all of these watershed events that put the United States into the dominant position it is in today involved the concept of dirty hands.  US politicians and the military have had to get their hands dirty countless times in order to protect the freedoms of each citizen.  Now when presenting the idea of bombing a city to most Americans, they would probably agree that this is a moral crime in that it causes deaths and the destruction of a city.  However, if you asked those same citizens whether or not they would rather live in a weakened United States of America in which their standard of living would be lower, but in which politicians would not get their hands dirty, I doubt they would agree to it.

Because the point is, in order to maintain the liberties and freedoms we see as fundamental to our daily life, someone in government has to be willing to get their hands dirty.  For instance, the civil war fought between the North and South of the United States involved killing fellow citizens in order to eradicate slavery.  This meant that many citizens who were fighting to abolish slavery had to die in the conflict.  Now, does it seem possible to look at the death toll and say that all of these American lives were worth what was achieved?  I think for many people today the answer would be yes, and this is because our nation views certain fundamental rights and liberties we enjoy as worth fighting for, no matter how may lives it takes.  Because if we did not have these rights and liberties our nation would assume a completely different, and probably worse off, identity.  The leaders of the United States understand that you cannot refuse to get your hands dirty in the face of a threat to certain liberties and still retain these liberties.

Moreover, I believe successful nations learn to embrace the concept of dirty hands.  Successful nations like the United States have citizens that are willing to put their lives on the line for the rights that they enjoy and want to continue to enjoy.  And I believe this acknowledgement of getting ones hands dirty as necessary to achieve certain ends is what makes our nation strong.  The United States is strong because other nations understand and believe the United States will unite in action against threats to our freedoms.

I want to make it clear that dirty hands involves committing immoral crimes in order to achieve an end that is seen as desirable enough to outweigh the moral wrongs committed.  The way that many weak, corrupt nations depart from this is that these countries are unable to unify in protecting individual liberties because they have never realized any of these liberties.  This is true usually because the leaders of nations like this do not embrace the concept of dirty hands.  In other words, these leaders are not willing to do whatever it takes to benefit the population they rule over.  These corrupt leaders are unconcerned with the well being of the general population. They are more concerned with achieving power, wealth, or a multitude of self interested ends.  And clearly, committing moral crimes for self gain is not embracing dirty hands.

What I'm saying is that I think what makes our nation great is that from the very top of our nation to the bottom we can agree that principles like democracy and protecting individual rights are of utmost importance.  It is true that differences in political ideology often create tensions within our government, but in times of threats to our nation's safety, like the bombings of 9/11, our nation's leaders unite in a common goal of doing whatever is necessary to eliminate these threats and maintain our liberties.

In other words, our nation's leaders and citizens all understand and embrace dirty hands as necessary.  This is not to say we are happy that maintaining these liberties involves dirty hands.  I know that we would all like to live in a society in which we had the same liberties but never had to give lives or kill the citizens of another country to uphold our rights.  However, the political reality is that we need to embrace dirty hands or else acknowledge that our liberties are never going to be safe.

Overall, what makes a nation function well is if it is built on ideals that citizens from the top down can agree are important and necessary to fight for.  And the fact that not all nations have institutions in place that protect their rights makes threats from the outside inevitable. Corruption at the top weakens a nation as  citizens will never unite behind a cause that has not been and will never be about promoting their freedom.   But because the United States, and nations like it, have institutions that citizens believe benefit them, these citizens are always willing to unite and fight.  These citizens have learned that dirty hands is a necessary evil to bettering their children and their children's children.

The whole point of this is to shed light on the fact that dirty hands is a concept that we should be happy we understand as necessary.  Dirty hands is not possible in many nations because there are no common goals for the citizens to be passionate enough to fight for. In the end, the thing that makes dirty hands possible is having ideals and freedoms that citizens believe are important enough to commit crimes for.  I know that although it is not ideal, the concept of dirty hands is one I believe has helped our nation get where it is today, and for that each of us should be thankful.