<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">Chris Hedges writes, with angry conviction, like a preacher, supplementing the tones of a Zinn or a Chomsky:<div><br></div><div>…Those in power have disarmed the liberal
class. They do not argue that the current system is just or good,
because they cannot, but they have convinced liberals that there is no
alternative. But we are not slaves. We have a choice. We can refuse to
be either a victim or an executioner. We have the moral capacity to say
no, to refuse to cooperate. Any boycott or demonstration, any
occupation or sit-in, any strike, any act of obstruction or sabotage,
any refusal to pay taxes, any fast, any popular movement and any act of
civil disobedience ignites the soul of the rebel and exposes the dead
hand of authority. "There is beauty and there are the humiliated,"
Camus wrote. "Whatever difficulties the enterprise may present, I
should like never to be unfaithful either to the second or the first." </div><p>"There is a time when the operation of the
machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't
take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put
your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon
all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop," <a class="external" target="_blank" href="http://www.savio.org/who_was_mario.html"> Mario Savio </a>
said in 1964. "And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to
the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be
prevented from working at all."</p><p>The capacity to exercise moral autonomy,
the capacity to refuse to cooperate, offers us the only route left to
personal freedom and a life with meaning. Rebellion is its own
justification. Those of us who come out of the religious left have no
quarrel with Camus. Camus is right about the absurdity of existence,
right about finding worth in the act of rebellion rather than some
bizarre dream of an afterlife or Sunday School fantasy that God rewards
the just and the good. "Oh my soul," the ancient Greek poet Pindar
wrote, "do not aspire to immortal life, but exhaust the limits of the
possible." We differ with Camus only in that we have faith that
rebellion is not ultimately meaningless. Rebellion allows us to be free
and independent human beings, but rebellion also chips away, however
imperceptibly, at the edifice of the oppressor and sustains the dim
flames of hope and love. And in moments of profound human despair these
flames are never insignificant. They keep alive the capacity to be
human. We must become, as Camus said, so absolutely free that
"existence is an act of rebellion." Those who do not rebel in our age
of totalitarian capitalism and who convince themselves that there is no
alternative to collaboration are complicit in their own enslavement.
They commit spiritual and moral suicide.</p><div><a href="http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/08-2">http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/08-2</a></div><div><br></div><div><i>Chris Hedges writes a regular column for <a href="http://www.truthdig.com" target="_blank">Truthdig.com</a>. Hedges graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was
for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He
is the author of many books, including: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400034639?ie=UTF8&tag=commondreams-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=1789&creativeASIN=1400034639" target="_blank">War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning</a>, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0743255127?ie=UTF8&tag=commondreams-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=1789&creativeASIN=0743255127" target="_blank">What Every Person Should Know About War</a>, and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0743284437?tag=commondreams-20/ref=nosim" target="_blank">American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.</a> His most recent book is <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1568584377?ie=UTF8&tag=commondreams-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=1789&creativeASIN=1568584377" target="_blank">Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle</a>. </i></div><br />--
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