MMATERIAL something plus’’ – This was the phrase coined by the late doyen of American opinion writers, Walter Lippman, as the defining aura in Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle, and Konrad Adenauer. With indomitable courage and clarity of vision, these towering figures in contemporary history, together with Franklin Roosevelt, orchestrated the outstanding victory over Adolf Hitler’s dream of a 1,000-year Reich dominated by the Aryan super race – and saved Europe for civilization during the Second World War.
While V-2 rocket bombs were raining over London, it was Churchill who gave the lion’s roar that "there will always be an England." His speech, considered one of the four great speeches of the past century, galvanized his compatriots to unprecedented heights of courage and enduring stamina. De Gaulle steadfastly maintained, with customary Olympian hauteur, that "France without greatness is not France!" And Adenauer resuscitated the self-respect and dignity of his people to elevate them from the depths of humiliation and despair and rehabilitate the German name after that war.
The phrase ‘immaterial something plus’ is open to interpretations. Years ago, Lady Valentine, Churchill’s widow, raised eyebrows after selling a couple of her late husband’s paintings because she was running short of resources to maintain her accustomed lifestyle. The British parliament was so shamed that it hastily increased her pension. Both De Gaulle and Adenauer also did not leave much to enable their heirs to indulge in any luxurious living. Yet, during the period of massive reconstruction after the war, these men could have raked in billions in payola that local officials could only dream and drool about.
But the phrase meant more than the absence of corruption in the highest echelons of leadership. In his study of great lives, the historian Samuel Eliot Morison posited the conclusion that sterling performance is motivated by pride, which he defines as an infirmity of the truly noble mind. In magisterial leaders, pride could translate into undreamed-of heights of superlative fulfillments. Against the Good Book’s injunction, it would seem that pride is not such a mortal sin after all, when applied to the benefit of humankind.
Even now hundreds of poor Filipinos are queuing at recruitment agencies offering gainful jobs in Iraq. Their plight gives voice to one common refrain: Better to take a chance in Iraq than die of hunger here. Nobody could justifiably blame them; they have families to feed, provide a roof over their heads, and children to send to schools even under the shade of spreading major trees.
This should have been the strongest argument vis-à-vis the case of Angelo de la Cruz. Certainly, the sympathy of his compatriots with his terrible predicament is beyond cavil. On the other hand, De la Cruz went to the Middle East on his own volition and accord. This government did not send him there. Our action is the mirror of our fate. Nevertheless, we will be happy to see him reunited with his family again.
Joseph Stalin reputedly ordered the liquidation of 20 million people through direct execution by gunfire and deliberate starvation, and blithely called it statistics, but paradoxically conceded that one man’s death could be a tragedy.
Perhaps we should try to understand President Gloria in this light.
As for the fascists masquerading as the constitutional right (two NGOs) and the communists pretending to be the democratic left (two partylist groups), they should not delude themselves into thinking that PGMA caved in to their inane posturings and rabid rantings. They are merely rubble in the arena of genuine libertarian conflicts and dissensions.
