Personal Abhorrence

he marriage of the Middle Forces with the Militant Left, is off to a rocky start, judging by the fistfight at the Wedding, which may have been started by "uninvited guests." But it may soon end in an ugly divorce over this ill-conceived, densely-named "People's Tribunal."

And the Jilted Lover is playing their public acts of wild abandon for all its worth. The Palace will tar-n-feather them all as commie rats. Tragic.

I feel sad for many good people who are being exposed to an undeserved obloquy due mainly to the company they keep. They believed uncritically that "the enemy of thine enemy is thine friend." But this widely accepted rule apparently has at least one exception--when the enemy of thine enemy is the enemy of thine both!

It would've been so much better to have called it the "Truth Commission" or even the "June 26 Movement", after the date in 2006 when, by the Rule of Law and the Grace of God, a smarter, meaner Opposition can attempt to impeach Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and not William MacKinley!

Many of the Middle Forces within the anti-GMA "coalition" are undoubtedly realizing that they actually have many more interests in common with her, than with the Organized Left. And this even takes into account that it is her very ouster they still seek.

This is what comes from proclaiming that our

"personal abhorrence of Communism as an ideology ends where the right of any Filipino to adopt and express an ideology begins."

I have no legal argument with that. But I was nonplussed by this when I first read it in MLQ3's piece and now I know why. I don't think it makes any sense to "personally abhor" something yet take such an accomodating attitude toward it. I simply cannot believe that all ideologies are created equal before that exquisitely fine-tuned faculty which produces "personal abhorrence."

I assume that the very few things which we personally abhor are those that our conscience, taste, and discernment unanimously and decisively reject. Therefore we should proclaim our personal abhorrence of bankrupt ideologies--if we really mean it--and not hide it under a bushel where only God and the Bloggers will see it. We cannot just "take it or leave it" because that would be diffidence, not abhorrence.

If we surrender the moral and intellectual initiative in any area of reforming our society and polity, then those who have a comprehensive and determined programme of action of their own will, by default, hijack the machineries of the people's liberty and the people's will and warp it for their own purposes.

That is exactly what happened with this People's Tribunal idea, which I never thought they would conduct absent of any sense of irony, and with such Stalinesque gravity.

Presidium!

What did the Party List think it was doing? A Dress Rehearsal for the Supreme Court of the coming National Democratic Republic of the Philippines? It's an insult to kangaroos.

The Palace is gonna eat the opposition alive on this one, because of the Organized Left's appalling sense of the dramatic and its unwitting demonstration of what Revolutionary Justice actually is: a Dictatorship of the Broken Record.

Why has it become politically incorrect in this country to speak about our personal abhorrence for the Organized Left without scraping our nose on the cold, stone floor in obsequious paean to freedom of expression? Does it count for nothing at all that "to express" that ideology which we "personally abhor," the communists have been waging the longest-running insurgency since Mao's Long March and are the principal reason our Tourism industry has never taken off, even if we own at least a hundred Hawaiis?

The maddening thing about it all is, no one is willing to admit they are "communists" because a persecution complex is one way to hide from the utter disdain that the people feel for that ideology.

Or should I say personal abhorrence?

UPDATE:

MLQ3 acquits himself admirably of a charge I did NOT level against him. But it's worth quoting the relevant parts of his Daily Dose post today, entitled Killing Communism Softy: for Philippine Commentary readers. I think this does represent the thinking of many among the Middle Forces:

Speaking of DJB at Philippine Commentary, his latest post wonders how I can personally abhor Communism and yet take an accommodating attitude toward it. It begins with my view that it is counterproductive to suppress thought: one must fight ideas with ideas. The problem is, Communist thought has won an intellectual victory, in that with the demise of the generation that defeated Communism in the 1950s, no one has taken their place. Generations of Filipino schoolchildren are being brainwashed in the schools, because the history textbooks are being written by Communists. Second, Communism in this country has mutated into a kind of religion, and the history of religious persecution suggests that persecuting religions only strengthen them. Which brings us to the question of armed struggle.

The rights of a citizen to espouse whatever ideology he picks up can only be tempered by the right of the State to defend itself if the ideology in question embarks on armed struggle. But there is more than one way to win a war. There is winning “hearts and minds,” which begins with education, and involves economic development: eliminate, or reduce poverty, or even more basic than that, establish a justice system that is less susceptible to subversion by the wealthy and well-connected, and you strike a mortal blow at Communism. Our counter-insurgency efforts have been characterized by brutality and corruption, and there are times when I am quite convinced that the military feels it is in its interest not to really defeat insurgencies, because the insurgencies give them something to do. From a pragmatic point of view, it is better to neutralize, in a sense, Communists the same way that putschists such as Gringo Honasan were neutralized: elect them into office. That’s one way, at least: you defeat Communism by smothering them with love, so to speak: but a purely military solution, with the present military we have, simply won’t work.

Dean Bocobo does make a pungent point about the Communists lacking the guts to admit what -and who- they are. I earned evil looks from Atom Araullo when, on Studio 23’s Y-Speak Live, I castigated he and his group for lacking the intellectual honesty to state they’re Communists and they want the overthrow of the existing system by any means. This country, were it to become a fully-functioning democracy, must inevitably have an above-ground Communist party just as it should have a flourishing Socialist party (and not the one headed by National Security Adviser on leave Norberto Gonzales): my personal inclinations are for a kind of State Socialism on the European model, after all.

There is, of course, a highly personal aspect to the question of Communists and Communism, and it began with asking my father how he could bear no hatred in his heart over the murder of his mother, sister, and brother-in-law by the Communists; and similar questions to my aunt who lost her mother, sister, and husband to the Communists, and yet who spent martial law visiting Communists in prison. Their answers were the same: the depths of hatred and despair over the inequities of our society make the unthinkable happen. For them it helped that their faith taught to hate the sin but not the sinner; since I don’t have their faith, I have to ask myself, how can we beat their swords into plowshares?