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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
August 13, 2006
AIDS day
If I have any flaw (and I admit, it is hard to imagine), it must be attributing malice to people who are governed only by stupidity. Attribute this to a fiery, “Scotch” nature (I am using this word in the Canadian way). We have certain foibles, the vices corresponding to our strengths, and can come down on every side of a question, with great force.The editors have assigned me the topic of AIDS, today. This is for a special number of the Ottawa Citizen, guest edited by a certain Stephen Lewis, and with a contribution from a certain William J. Clinton -- regardless of ancestry, two other-angled “Scotch” sensibilities. Anyone who has read me for some time will know, that these are strange bedfellows for me. I'm surely on record making intemperate statements against each; I was making them for eight years when the latter was President of those United States. In my jaundiced view, both have that mysterious “gliberal” facility to find the wrong end of almost any stick. As a Christian I might assume that they “mean well”; that they are governed by their own consciences, and by circumstances which I cannot judge, being privileged neither to occupy their minds, nor that of God who knows everything. AIDS is a topic I have always shied away from. That is what makes so poignant the quandary I intend my reader to share. He will remember I have strong opinions on a great variety of subjects. I have strong opinions on this one, too, but have not the slightest intention of imparting them, today, for as one editor has assured me, it would be the wrong place and time. My more sympathetic readers will anyway guess at what my disputes would be, with the premises upon which most AIDS campaigns are mounted, and even with the facts that are stated to buttress those premises. He will guess that my approach to preventing the spread of AIDS, in Africa or anywhere, would be radically different. I can nevertheless hope that whatever is done will have good results, whether intentionally or unintentionally. It is not that I don’t care about this disease, or about its victims. I have known several personally; I have watched one die. I am entirely in favour of curing disease, this and any other. I am generally not in favour of sentimentality, for mere sentiment is invariably false. Which hardly means all expressions of compassion are intrinsically false. Only that I didn’t cry at the funeral of Diana. And was unwilling to cry, for show. I do not think sentimentality is of any use in confronting a real problem. Doctors and nurses have been, traditionally, trained to avoid sentimentality, because it actually gets in the way of compassion. They need clear heads, and sometimes, a ruthless disposition. For they are in a relation, ultimately, not with the patient but with his disease. That is the very reason why it is inadvisable to be medically treated by a close personal friend, when it can be avoided. The “objectivity” of such a person is subverted. Or why, more generally, a little space is required even in the closest friendships; and why falsity and disorder enter into relations that have become illegitimately overwrought. The closest bond of family alone can sanctify confusion of persons; and outside that, only the bond of true religion. My own personal experiences with AIDS are my own personal experiences. I honour the privacy of the victims, living or dead. They were friends; I mourn them, and pray for their repose, in the knowledge our God is infinite love, and therefore, logically, incapable of hatred. But they have done with the world. There may well be circumstances in which such privacy cannot be honoured, because greater moral interests are at stake. One example is when we must act to prevent the spread of infection; and there are other examples. But none of these applies to the AIDS cases I have known. Each, I am sure, from the moment he learned of his own infection, took the necessary precaution to prevent it ever being communicated to another person, loved or unloved. Verily, the greatest mistake we post-moderns make is to assume that God has abandoned us, whether from our rejection, or for what we have done (the two are finally the same). All in tribulation and disease, all who are dying, should know there is a cure beyond any human cure, and a salvation beyond all human judgement. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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