A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days

When we congratulate ourselves on what we perceive to be our generosity to our fellow human beings, we need to be reminded that we are capable of cruel and obscene designs. Look into every mirror, and you may well find a monster in waiting. Shouldn't we be reminded to keep that monster at bay?

And yet, when the worst elements of our nature regularly command the front pages of our newspapers and the top stories in our TV reports, we need to be reminded that we can rise above all that is cynical and degraded in us. Look into every mirror and you may well find heroism seeking to be unleashed. Shouldn't we be reminded to let loose that which is truly transcendent and great in our natures?

When the idea of human liberty is seen as a pipe dream, we needed to be reminded that if an idea is given a voice and backed with cleverness in service of a great cause, it can triumph . . . no matter how improbable the victory might seem to even its most devoted--and yet at times, despairing--supporters. Look into every mirror and you may well find someone willing--yearning--to toil ceaselessly for what is right, someone who would just as soon banish despair as he or she would a deadly plague. Shouldn't we be reminded that hopefulness is the greatest nourishment for our greatest ideas? And shouldn't we work to nourish our ideas with the very hope that at times seems so ephemeral but when attained, becomes the greatest instrument available for bringing light against the darkness.

It is easy for us to live our twenty-first century lives and to reassure ourselves that the triumph of William Wilberforce and other abolitionists over the British slave trade was as sure as morning following night. The truth, however, is that the victory of Right over Wrong is always a too close run thing for those who seek to be in the Right. People who are in the Right must always fight scared, if only because the stakes are so high. And in the event that I have not spelled matters out explicitly enough, linger over the next two sentences: No victory over an abomination can be taken for granted, even if those victories follow one after another at a dizzying pace. No triumph can be assumed, even if we sometimes think we have stumbled onto a treasure trove of them.

Victories of Right over Wrong take time. They take effort. They take sweat. They even take lives. There is nothing inevitable about them. And that is how it should be. Because if it were otherwise, then heroism would be devalued. Courage would be an everyday trait instead of an exceedingly rare one. Valor would be as natural as breathing, instead of being a prized and rare quality of the soul. And eloquence in service of the truly noble deed would put people to sleep instead of waking them up.

Sometimes, bad people win. Sometimes, bad ideas triumph. This depressing fact can be attributed to many a failing but chief among those failings could very well be an unwillingness in us to fight for a just cause with a sense of desperation, a belief that we cannot consider it inevitable that the best ideas will always win out. And even if we approach a battle of ideas with the sure faith that in time, the superior thought will be the victorious one, shouldn't we fight scared and desperate all the same, if only to lessen the wait for such a victory?

We admire William Wilberforce and those like him not just for the ideas they fought for, but for the desperation with which they fought for them, for the passion they brought to the struggle. Wilberforce and his allies did not blithely assume that someday, their wisdom would be the accepted gospel of the land. Quite the contrary; they knew the steep odds they faced in abolishing the slave trade. They were soberly mindful that they were taking on an institution that was perceived to be just as immortal as it was immoral. They won thanks to their sobriety of thought, and perhaps, just perhaps, thanks to the overconfidence of their opponents, the belief that the fight would inevitably be won anew by the slave trade and those it had in its pockets. The champions of the slave trade had grown fat, happy and ultimately, complacent. Wilberforce and the abolitionists were hungry, determined and bursting to overcome the Old Order. Their ideas triumphed not just because of the superiority inherent in those ideas, but also because of the fevered devotion of the abolitionists to the beliefs that drove them. Put quite simply, the abolitionists wanted to win more than their opponents did. And in politics, Hustle makes Muscle.

The slave trade was supplanted by the thought of freedom and the people willing to work tirelessly for that freedom. Be it ever thus with abominable ideas. May they be overcome by beliefs that spring from the best that is within us. And may those beliefs be aided by champions who are like what William Wilberforce was.

Champions who are the best amongst us.