Few Can Handle Risks of Great Leadership (11/20/05)

by Dean Hartwell

 

I saw the movie North Country recently.  The plot, based on a true story, revolves around a young woman who goes to work in the mines in Northern Minnesota.  Several male co-workers harass her and her female co-workers.

 

When the young woman (played by Charlize Theron) begins to confront the men at work, the name calling and hazing get worse.  It dawns on her that fighting back causes her tormentors to single her out from the pack.

 

As unfair as it sounds, a leader must stand out in order to be heard.  If they wish to lead others, they must take a road never before traveled.

 

Some people in recent history have done that.  Mahatma Gandhi protested against British occupation of India non-violently through civil disobedience.  Martin Luther King spoke courageously about the need for civil rights in the United States and for the end of the war in Viet Nam.  John Lennon sang of a world that he imagined in which the people “live as one” without countries, religion or possessions.

 

What do all of these great leaders have in common?

 

Assassins took each of them from us.  Society was not ready to hear their messages.  Consider the messages that we are not willing to listen to.

 

We are not ready to hear that the government has lied to us about September 11^th.  David Ray Griffin, who has written and spoken extensively about 9/11, says that the assertion that controlled demolitions, not the planes crashing into the towers, brought down the World Trade Center towers is a “fact.”[1]  He and others have spoken out bravely against a government that refuses to accept any responsibility for the attacks, despite overwhelming evidence, for example, that it knew about them ahead of time.[2]

We are not ready to hear that we must leave Iraq.  Just recently, Representative John Murtha (D-PA), a veteran of the Korean and Viet Nam Wars and a hawk on many military issues, called for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.[3]  He pointed out, correctly, that our troops are targets for insurgent acts of terrorism.  The fact that the Bush Administration promptly rejected the idea suggests that it perceives Representative Murtha as a threat.  Republicans have also just started an investigation of contracts that Murtha’s lobbyist brother helped companies receive from the government.[4]

We are not ready to hear that fraud has spoiled our election system in many parts of the nation.  A voter in Washington State described to me his experiences with a “credit card” voting system.  He said that he and other voters walked away unsure for whom they had cast their votes.[5]  A computer programmer recently testified before a State legislative hearing in Ohio about how a Republican Speaker of the House in Florida (Tom Feeney) had contracted with him to rig the vote in Florida in 2000.[6]  Questions, too, still abound about the last presidential election, particularly in Ohio.  But no one has stepped forward to address any of these concerns.

 

Until we are ready to face reality as a society on these and other issues, we can forget about a great leader stepping forward to show us the way.  The price is too high: harassment, unwarranted investigations and even assassinations come to those who speak out.  Would you be willing to pay it?

 

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