Communion And Communality

Every now and then, things tend to come together, thank heaven. I have written previously of John C. Calhoun's view of the Union. He did not believe force was a legitimate way to enforce union. He wondered whether the contracting states agreed - although they were not aware of it - to give up all pretensions to independence up to the threat of arms and beyond, to war itself. They found out that the North and its leaders did consider the political entity to be worth the more than 600,000 casualties in both armies. I had never questioned this before. Reading Calhoun, who was writing in 1834 not about slavery, but the oppressive effects of Northern duties on imports, which in turn were applied by foreign countries against US exports; i.e., Southern agricultural products. Enforced communality. Reading Black Ship To Hell by Brigid Brophy, I read: "...Herein lies the secret of religion's intolerance. It is simply dramatic intolerance, which cannot afford to have a scoffer in the house but must sweep us all along in a communal act of imagination. Religion, however, has so enlarged the theatrical conventions that they encompass the whole of reality; it takes the universe for its auditorium...the religionnist knows that his god is diminshed by anyone's unbelief." Ms. Brophy led us to this by a discussion of James M. Barrie's play Peter Pan, wherein if even one child in the audience fails to clap their hands, Tinker Bell will die. Once again, enforced communality. Enforced by the force of the temporary suspension of disbelief, true, but what exactly differentiates it from civil war? For is not a war that kills on so great a scale just another willing suspension of disbelief, but on a much vaster scale? What wars accomplish are the destruction of the old, and the start of building the new on the foundation of the exhaustion of ancient grudges. Truly the Founding Fathers did not envisage taking up arms against their brothers. Certainly the early Christians entered freely into a communality which they bore lightly as no burden to them. At what point do compacts - freely entered into - become compulsion? Do you think the States would have entered into Union if they all clearly stated and propounded the point: if you go, we shall wage war against you, and extirpate you - root and branch? I think not. When does willing freedom become unwilling compulsion? When does the ideology of the symbolic overwhelm the real? When does the Flag and Nation feel themselves adequate to quash the individuals? And why do we do this? Why does the good of the many outweigh the good of the one? And if the one wants to break company with the many, why do we go to war to compel them to remain as an unhappy minority?