Specters of Berlin: "The World That Stands As One" Speech

Originally posted July 24, 2008. Reprised September 7, 2018.

President(ial hopeful) Barack Obama has decentered the West. Now the world comes into view. It is a world in which can be seen in the words of Dr. King, an “inescapable network of mutuality.” Senator/President Barak Obama expressed today, to the world what Baha'u'llah suggested mid-nineteenth century that the problems facing global society could not be effictively addressed so long as nations and their peoples remain ensconced behind barriers of prejudice, fear and intolerance:

“The well-being of mankind, its peace and security, are unattainable unless and until its unity is firmly established. This unity can never be achieved,” Baha’u’lah moreover asserts, “so long as the counsels which the Pen of the Most High hath revealed are suffered to pass unheeded."

Imagine: all the people listening today in Tiergarten park to Obama's speech entitled "The World that Stands as One," addressing Berlin, Germany, Europe, the people of the world as "a proud citizen of the United States, and a fellow citizen of the world."

One thing that I must say about this black man - aside from the fact that from the podium today his words resounded not far from the mark hit by that X, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz whose own journey had taken him to speak before the peoples of the world on the need to unite in solidarity against oppression and tyrrany is that this man's understanding of history is such that it allows him to proceed along the guidelines of Marx's maxim in Theses on Feurbac that the point is not just to understand history, but to change it.

So, it was in recognition of this auspicious calling that with candorous wit and stately levity, Mr. Obama referred to an unofficial precedent in his greeting the people of Berlin: "I know that I don't look like the Americans who've previously spoken in this great city." Neither did Obama speak through the mouthpieces of history's fragments nor did he appear in spirit or in deed as an extension of the Bush legacy - though rumors circulate about Obama being George W's 11th cousin. Maybe the proof is on youtube.

But with regard to the question of genealogy and family relations, Obama had much spirited insight to offer. Troping on that city's emblematic significance in the history of world politics and reining in late President Regan's words to Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall," Obama pled before a crowd of over 200,000 to to the people of the world to eliminate the barriers between national, ethnic, racial, class, gender, and all such identities.

"We cannot afford to be divided. No one nation, no matter how large or powerful, can defeat such challenges alone. None of us can deny these threats or escape responsibility in meeting them," he said. The greatest danger, Obama said, "is to allow new walls to divide us from one another."

Obama decentered the west from its own vision of the world today by suggesting that of vital importance to the survival of each, is the survival of all. Our interconnectedness has not been emphasized this brilliantly since the days in which Martin Luther King, Jr breathed and spoke and marched and opened mail and encountered would-be enemies as promised friends amongst us. I, as "a proud citizen of the United states and fellow citizen of the world" am able to be such, today, because of the bravery, intelligence, and, I believe humility that it takes to raise one's head above the morass of competing political identities and agendas and speak the truth - whether obvious and welcome or, simultaneously, onerous and strange - that, as in the words of Baha'u'llah "the earth is but one country and mankind its citizens."

"That is why America cannot afford to turn inward. That is why Europe cannot turn inward." Though, together they can be the best of friends, yet, the allegiance to mutual benefit that Obama envisions and proposes across the Atlantic, he clearly identifies as the primary exigency of global security, prosperity and equality. Such a fraternity as can be experience between the United States and Europe must also be realized between Europe and 'the rest of the world' as it were.

This is truly, I believe, the crux of his message today, and its most salient truth, which was only reinforced, for me, at the moment when robust tears of astonishment, gratitude and joy streamed down my face. I was not witnessing simply the moving and timely, if not overdue perspectives brought to the worldstage by Obama plain eloquence, but more so by the facial of an invigorated and adoring audience who rushed to greet Mr. Obama at his exit. These countenances expressed such belief and recognition in the principles expounded, told of such deep and dear spiritual relief; with thirsts so quenched, eyes so grateful, eager and joyous to embrace the call to reason and altruism, hope and deliberateness, to participate in the praxis of principles that alone can hasten a new day for the people of this world, and change the course of human history from one of destruction, division and discord to one of peace, harmony and communion.

It was, as if, America had birthed a new spiritual leader for the world, and many a hearer was found, and spoken to today, and, i hope in the case of this listener, transformed if not, brought a little closer to that day, once visible only from a lofty mountain top. Have the seas truly risen? Or has the horizon drawn some brighter tomorrow nearer, raised some restless dream anew?

At last world events have conspired reminded me of one my favorite sentiments in the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre, who penned in the blazing introduction to Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth;"And when one day our human kind becomes full-grown, it will not define itself as the sum total of the whole world’s inhabitants, but as the infinite unity of their mutual needs."

This is, to be sure, a critical juncture at which human history has arrived to pause and evaluate, which our friend Obama helps us to herald.

"The well-being of mankind, its peace and security," are greatly in question today, but are they not also in view?

How do we heed those counsels that will firmly establish unity? Or descend that city to earth?

How do we transfer the lofty dream to the plains of reality?

I'm glad somebody is contemplating these questions.