"A Kinder Gentleman Treads Not the Earth"

international | miscellaneous | opinion/analysis Saturday January 22, 2005 17:38 by Sean Crudden - impero sean at impero dot iol dot ie Jenkinstown, Dundalk, Co Louth. 087 9739945

What is Strenght in Politics?

The tough guy (or the tough girl) is the accepted norm in politics and public affairs generally - particularly since the days of Margarer Thatcher. We have heard seductively in the past of the efficacy of "tough love." But what is toughness? Is it just cowardly bluster? Is it a real virtue in sport or in our personal lives, for example?

Sean Crudden

"How many cowards, whose hearts are all as false
As stairs of sand, wear yet upon their chins
The beards of Hercules and frowning Mars,
Who, inward search’d, have livers white as milk
And these assume but valour’s excrement
To render them redoubted."

It cannot be but posturing and bluster were as much a part of Shakespeare’s time as they are of our own. It is a striking element of the stance of stiff-necked and proud right-wing politicians that their war-mongering and unforgiving attitude to their political enemies may, in fact, cloak or mask personal weakness.

"The quality of mercy is not strain’d,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice bless’d:
It blesses him that gives, and him that takes.
`Tis mightiest in the mightiest, it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown:
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptered sway,
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself,
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s,
When mercy seasons justice."

Does the hungry lawyer remind himself of Shakespeare’s words? Does the angry leader think in these terms when he berates his enemy and "straightens him round." Is it progressive to reiterate, classify, parse and analyse past wrongs?

Do we all expect our leaders to echo Shylock as he demanded his pound of flesh?

"I have sworn an oath, that I shall have my bond."

Many people pride themselves today that theirs is a time of liberty and enlightenment. Could it be, on the contrary, that this is the epoch of the martinet and the bully? Are we being bullied, even, to the extent that the values of love and forgiveness are dismissed in our own minds as weakness and folly?