It’s been 280 years since Irish writer Jonathan Swift published one of his most famous works. The title is a long, but telling one: A Modest Proposal: For Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick. It has come to be known simply as A Modest Proposal. At the time of its publication, the author was given as anonymous; no doubt a judicious choice for Mr. Swift. The British were not amused.
Britain had taken control of Ireland, and restrictions placed on trade ruined the economy. There was a wide gap between the rich and the poor, and Swift made a “proposal” to deal with the problem. The result was one of the first documented satirical essays. There are different types of satire. Two categories are Horatian, a more playful kind of satire, and Juvenalian, much more serious and scornful, addressing an evil in society. A Modest Proposal was definitely of the latter type.
Briefly, Swift’s “proposal” was to train the poor to have children. These children would be raised as delicacies for consumption by the wealthy. The rich would have a rare dining pleasure, and the poor would be compensated. Overpopulation among the lower class would no longer be a societal problem. In fact, each child born to the lower class would represent a profit. The poor would have enough money to live without any benefit from the state. In time, the poor class might be eliminated altogether.
Swift presented his proposal in a very business-like manner. He lays out the plan with mathematical logic. He even provides recipes for preparing the delicacies.
People were horrified at this modest proposal. There were those who recognized the satire as such, and others who believed that the anonymous author was serious. Either way, Swift achieved his purpose by forcing people to focus on the issue. He definitely got their attention. One can imagine the indignant letters Swift might have received had he not published his Modest Proposal anonymously.
My much more modest column in last Wednesday’s Southbridge News had a similar response. It was my open letter to Barack Obama that was written prior to his address to the nation from West Point where he announced his decision about Afghanistan. I said that I hoped he would answer the question “What are we fighting for?” Also I said I hoped he had explained why taxes on the wealthy needed to be raised, why Congress needed to declare war, why all our resources should be directed to the Afghanistan “War,” and why he had to re-institute the military draft of young men and women into combat positions with no deferments allowed. There was enough in there to make everybody angry whether they believed my “proposal” was serious or not. And readers fell into both categories.
To me there is nothing more disheartening than the indifference and lack of knowledge displayed by most people regarding our nation’s military involvement around the world. Just a small group of people, our soldiers and our military families, are in any way inconvenienced by our activities in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan. Unless people have a personal stake in the outcome, there is no incentive to pay attention.
Check out what older high school kids and college students are focused on with current affairs. It is the rare exception to find any thought or knowledge of the war. Check the popularity of the “reality” shows, a misnomer if there ever was one. People can tell you who Maury or Jerry or Tyra is but can’t name even one member of the President’s Cabinet. People can say that the stock market is going up but have no idea that the country is stuck in a quagmire.
Just maybe if people think that they have something to lose with this war, they might, if only briefly, pay attention. How different would it be if the tax rates for the wealthy were raised significantly to pay for the war? What if college students and high school students once again had to face uncertain futures, not knowing when their numbers would be drawn for mandated military service? Would parents pay closer attention if it wasn’t somebody else’s kid but their own kids being sent to fight in a foreign land?
If reading my column caused some to be angry, if it caused some to focus, however briefly, on war and its many ramifications, if it caused anyone to awaken from an apathetic stupor, then I can declare, “Mission accomplished.”
©2009
This column is a follow-up to "What are we fighting for?"
http://massachusettsobserver.blogspot.com/2009/11/what-are-we-fighting-for.html
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