It was the Jewish version I heard: "Not by power, not by might, by spirit alone, shall we all live in peace." As it was being sung, I was preoccupied with images of all those nuclear missiles we and the Russians have aimed at each other, ready to end life on earth should a mere accident occur on either side, and the silly arguments raised in favor of keeping them in place. Also pictures of a crackpot with semiautomatic pistols and 33-round magazines. And assault weapons paraded at political speeches.
Coincidentally, a few days ago I stumbled across a quote from Al Capone, the mob boss who essentially owned Chicago a few generations ago. It was something like "You get more with a kind word and a gun than you get with a kind word alone." Implicit in his statement is that you also get more with a kind word and a gun than you get with a gun alone. (I’ve had that confirmed by other sources we won’t talk about here.)
Was it Teddy Roosevelt who said "Walk softly and carry a big stick"?
As a nation, have we overlooked the value of the spirit of peace? Of the kind word? Of walking softly? Anyone can point to 9-11 as proof that a benevolent smile and loving one’s neighbors aren’t sufficient in a hostile world. I can’t deny that. But there is danger in believing that benevolence and kindness are signs of weakness.
So let’s look at events since 9-11. The soaring costs of two wars that leave Osama bin Laden alive somewhere mocking us and our allies losing much of their traditional trust and respect for us, not to mention our plummeting credibility. Our imperiled economy, declining education and healthcare, and crumbling infrastructure, as we are forced to borrow money from nations whose interests are counter to our own, just to continue operating. Millions of Americans out of work, and the difficulty of finding products actually made in America.
And, surprise! We can’t tell the rest of the world what to do anymore.
Conclusion? A big gun alone doesn’t really make a person powerful. It just makes that person dangerous. Maybe that’s how the world sees us now, with our unquestionable military might: No longer the most powerful nation on earth, but, correctly or not, perhaps the most dangerous.
But suppose the rest of the world actually considers us the grand poobah among nation, as we’d like to believe. Here, within our borders, we feel weak, threatened, unsure of where we are, how we got here, and where we’re going. Some political leaders caution us to fear our own government. We’ve forgotten how to disagree without being disagreeable. We demonize each other for having different ideas. Some don’t trust the electoral process and threaten to replace ballots with bullets. To some others, America means so little that they flippantly and half-seriously talk of secession. We’re willing to crucify a political leader for failing the chastity test, and pay no heed to the charity in that person’s character.
Maybe the "big stick mentality" really makes us impotent as a nation, a society, and a culture. Maybe we’ll remain impotent until we add the other ingredient, the spirit of peace, by whatever name we want to call it.