Jean H Charles LLB, MSW, JD, is a regular contributor to the opinion section of Caribbean News Now. He can be reached at [email protected]By Jean H Charles
I was perusing this week the weekly Tablet, the journal of the Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn in New York, when I fell upon an article with picture showing Pope Francis eating with the poor in Rome on November 18, the day that has been dedicated by Vatican as the World Day of the Poor.
It strikes me as an unusual coincidence as to why that day November 18 was chosen. Indeed on this day some two hundred years ago, in Haiti, ragtag soldiers with captured firearms succeeded in overcoming some of the best soldiers of Napoleon Bonaparte in reversing the world order of the time that imposed slavery on black people transported from Africa to the Caribbean, the United States and to Latin America for almost 300 years.
Is it a divine inspiration or a coincidence, I will never know! What is certain each nation has a divine mission to fulfill on this earth for the betterment of humanity. Like a broken record, or rather like John the Baptist, preaching in the desert, I have been hammering the doctrine of good nation and good politics in several essays.
It is spelled in five steps:
1. Introduce the sentiment of appurtenance in the heart and in the spirit of the citizens so they will feel they are proud children of that country.
2. Build strong institutions and excellent infrastructure as close as possible where they live so they will not become nomads in their own country and nomads abroad.
3. Agree to institute an affirmative program on behalf of those who have been left behind for some reason or another in that country.
4. Find and apply the divine mission given by God to that country for the betterment of humanity and last but not least
5. Teach the next generation to abide to these rules so the country will not become one that was great in the past but no more in the present.
We will focus on the fourth and fifth principles for the purpose of this essay. Coming back to Haiti, it seems its divine mission has been to be a redemptory one, to help those who have been enchained in misery, in internal strife and oppression to get rid of those chains. As Pope Francis said in his homily at St Peter Basilica on November 18, “As the rich get richer, the increasing misery and cries of the poor are ignored every day, do we have eyes to see, ears to hear, and hands outstretched to offer help!”
Haiti has been a renegade nation in fulfilling this mission not only for its own people but on behalf of the mass of some 700 million people in the world who are unable to meet their basic needs; in fact, continued the Tablet, “Ten percent of the world’s population lives in extreme poverty.”
Haiti is not alone in negating this crucial role in being a light on the hill for others. The combined countries, of Egypt, Israel and Jordan occupy a special place in the Bible in witnessing the passing of an unusual God made man sent to earth to redeem the men and women spoiled by the original sin.
Jerusalem, Canaan and Bethlehem are known by all those who call themselves followers of Christendom. Yet the people and the governments of Israel, Jordan or Egypt have little to do with Christianity. You would expect those citizens would be the most zealous missionaries like the apostle Paul converting people to Christ in far away land. Such is not the case.
We can continue to pinpoint some nations with specific divine mission such as the United States, the first nation in the world to forge itself into one, out of the straitjacket of England that planned to keep it a colony forever. In a magnificent Constitution that spells the forbidding truth that all men are born equal, the United States should have made its own the fourth principle of nation building in helping countries becoming nations.
Immense money is spent through military intervention but very little is dedicated to nation building. In fact, the last presidents have declared peremptorily that they “do not do nation building”, meaning they have no business coaching other nations how to instill ethical conduct to groom good citizens.
England, the cradle of modern industrialization and the first through Charles Dickens that called upon the evilness of those that kept the workers in bondage for a low wage in filthy conditions, has the mission to continue the humanization of the work place.
France, the symbol of liberty, equality and fraternity, has preferred to follow Napoleon Bonaparte instead of promoting Ernest Renan, the father of the principles of a good nation.
South Africa that was redeemed by Nelson Mandela has a mission to show the rest of the world the evilness of apartheid is not a devastating cancer that will destroy forever the ethos of a nation. It can be revived as long as it is lead by a conciliatory leadership.
Suffice to stop at these examples to pinpoint the crystallization of the concept that each nation has a special divine mission to accomplish on this earth to make the world a better place to live in; it must seek that mission and focus on its realization.
The last part of the axis of a good nation calls on the youth to be vigilant in carrying on the generational baton in applying the above four principles. They are legions, the nations that were the phoenix of this world but are now in shambles. My own country of Haiti is the finest example of a country that should have been the light on the hill but is today the poorest nation on earth. After killing its own founding father, the country never recovered from this patricide; it is today floundering, seeking its way to build de novo a nation that would become hospitable to all.
You can also take the example of Greece, the cradle of the concept of democracy with philosophers like Aristotle and Plato that taught then what today we call universal rights of men. Greece is today the laughing stock of the European community, with citizens refusing to pay their taxes to the state, leading the nation in a bankruptcy without end.
We have the same situation with Iraq, where King Hammurabi, some 2,000 years before Christ, laid down principles of fraternity and solidarity that were unheard of anywhere else in the world. Yet Iraq is today in shambles in spite of the American Intervention introduced for its stabilization.
The Pope’s message on January 1, 2019, will be dedicated to the concept of Good Politics, calling on leaders to exercise political responsibility, encouraging dialogue amongst stakeholders quenching the thirst for fulfillment of each person in their respective nations with respect to their dignity and their rights.
Is this not what we have been promoting all along in our series on nation building? May we have in 2019 more countries converting voluntarily or with coaching into good nations, stopping at its source the nomad human caravan on both sides of the Atlantic!
