There was a moment in the early days of the Second World War when American veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade (that ragtag assembly of American communists and socialists best understood through George Orwell’s HOMAGE TO CATALONIA) itching to fight against Hitler and his proxies once again, found that many of their U.S. Army files were stamped with three mysterious initials: PAF.
Eventually it became clear. PAF meant “Pre-Mature Anti-Fascist.” Which begs the question of whether it is ever the right moment to *be* a fascist, or a wrong moment to be against one. Could one be a pre-mature anti-child-molester, for example? Or a pre-mature opponent of human slavery?
Clearly not. And so we wonder how our ally Pakistan sheltered the nation’s nemesis without our notice. Or how the Northern Alliance once fought *with* the Soviets, but then turned *against* the Taliban and became our nation’s new old friends. And all this says nothing about those perfectly-on-time anti-communists in Central America once called “the moral equivalent of our founding fathers,” by a man, later president, who went from leftish union activist to corporate song-and-dance man to the Great Republican Hope in the course of a relatively few years.
Do these contradictions matter? Yes, we think they do.
We need to see more evidence that our nation believes in some consistent human ideals, and will act on them with some consistency over time.
We wish to believe that we stand for something that is neither fashionable nor perishable like a quart of milk. Something it is never too early nor too late to believe in – and, perhaps, in the darkest moments, to fight for.
The.American.Word. 