The Indispensable Role of Nuisance Idealists
Why We Need More, Not Fewer, Eric Liddells
Every time I watch Chariots of Fire, I see something new (this is probably a good indicator that it’s a really, really quality film, because I’ve watched it a lot of times). My husband and I watched it last week, and again, it did not disappoint. Although I could have told you that the film was set in a post-World War I climate, this time around I saw it with the added benefit of having recently binge-watched a BBC documentary on the Great War.
There a scene in the movie where Liddell, after announcing that he will not run in the qualifying heats because they take place on Sunday, has been invited for a special audience with the Prince of Wales and the rest of the British Olympic Association. He knows that the only reason they want to see him is to convince him to change his mind about running on Sunday, and he is right. The Association cannot afford to let one eccentric man of the cloth who happens to also be one of the fastest men in the world get in the way of national glory in the Olympic games. The entire meeting is an effort to guilt him into compromising his religious convictions for his country. One member, the Duke of Sutherland, begins to sympathize with Liddell’s predicament of principles:
Lord Cadogan: In my day, it was King first, and God, after.
Duke of Sutherland: Yes, and the “war to end all wars” bitterly proved your point!
I never understood this line until now.
It’s hard even for historians to nail down exactly what the Great War was “about” (and I, who am not a historian and trying to keep this short, am definitely not going to try to tackle it here), but the long and short of it is that because of a complicated web of European alliances, tens of millions of lives were lost over a conflict that few understood and no one really stood to benefit from. They had answered the call of King and Country without question, without stopping to consider whether there was a higher principle to be followed, and the result was a war that begs the question to this day: “What was it for?”
The Duke’s point was that Liddell — a man who loved his country but had more loyalty to his principles — was exactly the kind of man that the nation, and the world, needed more of, if they were to avoid repeating the sins of the past. Men were needed who, when asked to obey the demands of their King over the demands of their conscience, would firmly, quietly, reasonably say “no” in the face of their country’s stern frown.
Patriotism is not the only voice that sometimes calls us to do what we know we should not, for some allegedly higher good. History is full of movements that have sprung up as the predictable result of injustice and exploitation. Our own country owes its conception to such a movement. But history shows us over and over again, that to resist evil does not make you immune to it. It is easy for righteous indignation to turn to fanaticism, and for that fanaticism to begin to make demands that go against the conscience. It’s easy to have the small voice of conscience drowned out with reminders of “who the enemy is” and the “good” that is going to come out of compromise.
It’s easy to see the ones who won’t go along as a nuisance. It’s easy to mistake their principles for arrogance, or naivety, or even betrayal. But don’t crush the idealists — don’t ask them to do what they know they must not. Don’t resent that they’ve brought up questions of ethics and ideological inconsistency that you’d rather not think about. Don’t resent that they condemn the wrongs of “our side” as well as the wrongs of the other. Don’t ask them to save their principles for another day — some future time when we can afford the “luxury” of them.
We need the small voices that quietly but inexorably answer back to the rage and the unbridled pragmatism: “It isn’t right … It isn’t right … It isn’t right …”, like the infuriating drip of a leaky faucet, to keep our revolutions from becoming bloodbaths; to keep our liberations from becoming anarchy; to keep our causes from losing their humanity.
Don’t resent the idealists. Reason with them, plead with them, argue with them — but don’t resent them. It’s better to have them than not to.
Thanks for reading! Click the link to follow my new publication, I Digress
