A Proposal: Tyranny Day
The need to remember enlightenment liberal values
Palestinians have suffered. Part of their suffering is caused by those that pretend to be their leaders, the terrorist group Hamas. Many seem unable to distinguish between Palestinians and Hamas, but we must—the latter are worthy of significant blame while the former are not. Similarly, we must distinguish between the government of Israel and the Israeli people—again, one is deserving of significant blame while the other is not. The same could be said of the US Federal Government and the American people. (See this post.)
I do not think the leaders of the US or Israeli governments are (currently) as bad as the leaders of Hamas, but both the US and Israel are democracies and thus the people of both are able, over time at least, to oust leaders if they are or become too bad. The Palestinians of Gaza do not have the same ability. They’ve lived under Hamas’ rule for almost 2 decades, largely without choice.
We should always be able to distinguish between political leaders and the people they (supposedly) represent and lead. We should always question the authority of whomever claims to lead. If no one does, even leaders that start with genuine legitimacy (perhaps because voted for by the overwhelming majority of the people), can become tyrants.
We should always remember this.
We should remember that tyrants are buoyed by silence and conformity. When people are unwilling to challenge the claims of tyrants, tyrants can claim what they will and get the people to do their bidding. If the leader says all people in a minority are child killers and no one challenges the claim, someone may take the claims to heart and seek to kill members of the minority in revenge for the purported child killings. If the leader claims a ring of pedophiles is operating from the basement of a pizzeria, someone may seek to kill the owners of that pizzeria (in case this doesn’t sound familiar, see this).
To help people remember the problems of tyranny and the need to allow—even encourage—people to speak out against the powerful, questioning claims of authority, I propose we ought to have a national Tyranny Day (or, perhaps better, as MFJ suggests, "Tyranny Awareness Day"). This would not be a day to commemorate tyrants but a day to remember how far the world has come from tyranny, how far the Enlightenment values of the classical liberals has brought us, and how precarious those values are and how progress can be reversed.
With a National Tyranny Day, we can encourage people to understand the importance of challenging authority, of speaking truth to power, of questioning, of saying what one believes. Of the importance, that is, of freedom of speech. For more on that see the following recent pieces at the Heterodox Academy Blog and The NY Times.
As always, brilliantly written! I love the idea of a Tyranny Day but fear people might try to cancel and criticize your idea without reading the whole post! 🤦♂️
Andrew, everything you said is accurate.
However, you omitted a very important fact. Gazans voted Hamas into power. They did so at a time when Hamas was well known to be a brutal, violent terrorist organization.
Clearly, that doesn't mean Gazans should be treated as if they are all Hamas.,but given that they knowingly chose as their leaders, people who were, at the time, known to be violent tyrants, they bear a different kind of moral culpability than most people who find themselves under the thumb of tyrants.
No one voted for Castro. No one voted for Lenin or Stalin or Mao or Kim.
Gazans voted for Hamas. They knew what they were getting.
Again, that doesn't mean they ARE Hamas. But it does mean that they are, themselves, vastly more responsible for the situation they find themselves in than your typical victim of tyranny.