Contributed by Doug Ferguson
Back in the early '60s, I lived in rural upstate New York. New York City was only a few hours away and once-a-year a trip to sightsee, shop and take in a Broadway play was easy to do. The year was 1962 and we were lucky enough to get tickets to the hit play, A Man for All Seasons, by playwright, Robert Bolt. This classic play about King Henry VIII of England and his devout Catholic Lord Chancellor Thomas More made quite an impression on me at the time and I remember it clearly. It won a Tony Award and was later made into an Academy Award winning movie in 1966.
It dealt with the complex and universal issues of laws, religion, politics, ethics, loyalty that surrounded King Henry and Thomas, played by then famous actor, Paul Scofield. The two grappled with the King's desired divorce of Catherine and subsequent marriage to Anne Boleyn. Although friends with the King, More could not approve the divorce because of the oath to God he had made as a Catholic. He was eventually beheaded as a traitor for not approving.
I revisited this memory after re-reading a rather long article I had written back in 2010 about Saul Alinsky, the original “community organizer”, with his total endorsement of the “End Justifies the Means” philosophy and how its application causes the “means” to almost always corrupt the “end”. In this article, I had referred to this famous Broadway play and was again reminded how it applies to our chaotic world we see today around us.
While at the time, like many others who had reservations about the press, I still had no idea how really biased and corrupt most of our mainstream media actually was as we can plainly see today. Also at that time, like most Americans, I had faith in our system of elections and voting to reflect the will of the people. Fast forward to the chaos and anarchy that has surrounded our country and the world in the past four years leading up to the election of 2020. No average person could have imagined the current massive voting fraud being uncovered today during the recent presidential election.
Now to get back to the famous play, A Man for All Seasons. There was one particular sequence of dialog in Act I between More and William Roper, the young man who is courting his daughter, Margaret, and thinks a visitor (Rich) is a spy and should be prosecuted as such. I still remember this scene to this day, and it has a direct bearing on our question of ends justifying means.
The critical lines come as Roper, a very self-righteous young man, wanted him to arrest an evil person who had been visiting them and More refused:
Roper: So now you'd give the Devil benefit of the law!
More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
Roper: I'd cut down very law in England to do that!
More: (roused and excited): Oh? (Advances on Roper) And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you---where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? (He leaves him)
This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast--man's laws, not God's---and if you cut them down--and you're just the man to do it--d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?
(Quietly) Yes, I'd give the Devil the benefit of the law, for my own safety's sake. (Emphasis mine, dkf)
As the play proceeds, as did the actual history the play is based on, More remains steadfast in refusing to approve the King's divorce as he feels it is a violation of an oath he made to God as Lord Chancellor. He is tried as a traitor by the King's court and is sentenced to death and executed.
Do we still have leaders with the courage to rule fairly with our laws and still follow their moral compass no matter the personal consequences as Thomas More did, or will all resort to Alinsky's Rules?
History will tell.
Doug Ferguson is a retired engineer living in Palmer, Alaska who has had a lifelong interest in science, history and, of course, politics.