Some familiar language from this time of year offers this agreeable notion: "... and on earth peace, good will toward men." Christmas wish, or Christmas promise? Either way, it seems like it ought to be easy enough to get with the program.
Well, it would be easy except for the sorry, slimy burden of all-too-human meanness and selfishness that, to one degree or another, weighs on every one of us.
How successful we are in living our personal lives in peace and harmony with family, neighbors, co-workers and the rest of our fellow travelers on the planet depends on upbringing, character and no small portion of luck. Others naturally have to do their part.
Some people excel in generosity, especially during this season of giving - taking to heart those admonitions to care for the needy. Perhaps they feel an extra obligation to share their own good fortune, or perhaps they understand how helping others can be a tonic for flagging spirits.
Sadly, we don't have to strain to find examples close to home of conduct at the other extreme, where meanness and selfishness run riot.
How do two young men go so far off the rails that they would commit a crime as horrid as the slaying of UNC-Chapel Hill's Eve Carson? Peace and good will were alien concepts in the killers' circles, that much is obvious. But there must also have been a failure of good will on the part of the community at large, if children in their innocence were allowed to grow into heartless fiends who would snuff out a life just to put some money in their pockets.
Our success as a community, a society, in abiding by the principles of peace and good will is determined not only by how we live as individuals, but also by decisions made in our behalf by the people we choose as our leaders.
National defense requires the ability to wield force against aggressors. But if America's claims to be a peace-loving nation are not to be seen as hypocritical, our elected officials and their military subordinates must take care not to use force simply because it is expedient or scratches some other kind of itch involving ego or self-advancement. And we as voters and citizens must hold them to that standard.
The war in Vietnam, in which I and a couple of million other Americans of my generation had the dubious privilege of participating, now seems mainly like a colossal waste. Whatever good it did in demonstrating U.S. resolve to protect an ally from a communist takeover was undone according to the old formula of destroying the village in order to save it.
Today Vietnam is one of our active trading partners, moving toward a China-style hybrid of communism and capitalism. We could have spared countless lives if we'd been less trigger-happy, less inclined to throw our military weight around, more attuned to the aspirations of Vietnamese nationalists, communists though they were, to chart their own future. In other words, more inclined to extend our collective good will.
This season we rightly hail the declared end of the U.S. war effort in Iraq, now vacated by our troops after eight and a half agonizing years. There remains the hope, and the not unrealistic possibility, that post-war Iraq will stabilize into a multi-sectarian and multi-ethnic democracy that would be a template for democratic government across the Arab world. Well and good. But the country could just as easily splinter, or become a puppet of Iran, where the ayatollahs' favorite hobby is cooking up anti-American mischief.
In either case, we have paid a terribly high price and asked enormous sacrifice from our military in return for outcomes that are anybody's guess. It was a war that we had the capacity (barely) to fight, but not one that we were compelled by grave national security threats to fight. Driven by pride and anger, we did not heed the precepts of peace and good will, and any benefits will have to be huge to outweigh the costs and suffering.
As shown by the secret Santas who have brightened many lives around here recently, good will translates into generosity, empathy for the rough situations in which people find themselves and concern for their happiness. We would make progress toward a "more perfect union" if the leaders who chart our domestic policies - national, state, local - used their authority to make sure those policies were generous in helping those who need help and in making lives more fulfilling, via good schools, good health care, good jobs, clean and safe communities.
There may be Scrooges among us, but a government of good will cannot pander to them or let them have the last word.
The holidays are a time to celebrate what we have while being especially attuned to what our neighbors lack. With peace and good will our watchwords, we can make lives better - our neighbors' and our own.
