Follow the Leader?

Baffling to many reporters was the alleged change of character in Jim Jones. The tragic events in Guyana were said to “defy rational analysis.”

Unfortunately, however, the mechanics of mania are built into our fondest political and religious beliefs. They need only mass weariness with responsibility, and a character with charisma, to set the wheels grinding down the final road to Jonestown.

Are we not taught righteous loyalty to leadership in public school? Don’t we learn surrender to another human being as saint or saviour in church? Aren’t we trained to hope all our lives that “the right man” will come along, that the “right system” will prevail?

A would-be leader’s sense of compassion and humanity may be genuine, or he may be nothing but a petty opportunist who sees a ready market in religion or politics—but the outcome is the same.

When this “right man” tries to meet all the longings we dump upon him, when he sees that his own ecstatic and extravagant promises cannot be humanly met, what does he do?

Can we expect him to publicly announce that it was all a mistake, folks, go on home? Or can we expect him to resort to expediency and deception, in order to keep alive the fond illusion called leadership.

And when we become uneasily aware that relinquishing our interests to another is not working, what do we do? Do we admit it looks like we were all wrong? That we should figure out things for ourselves? Or do we permit, even encourage our chosen leader to manufacture miracles and present us with programs.

Jim Jones’ change in character is no mystery. By investing him with the responsibility for their interests, his followers corrupted him as surely as he later ruined them.

Several decades ago in a nation torn by war and ravaged by inflation, a man came along with a system that offered strong medicine for hope, prosperity, and renewed pride. This man’s passion and eloquence, his sincerity and dedication to his nation’s rise, and his energetic radio presentations to reach the minds and hearts of the people—all combined to assure the simple and the intellectual alike that a true leader had risen. Women swooned, men cried, and God was thanked that at last these beleaguered human beings could be led to their high and holy destiny—as Master Race.

Never mind that his System was imperfect, requiring hatred for individuality and usurpation of property. All the suffering was for “the common good.” Never mind that their beloved leader fell into pathetic fits and tantrums. Surely he was beleaguered by the burdens of greatness. Never mind the talk of murders and persecutions and personal aberrations. Great men are always misunderstood. His followers remained loyal—to the end.

Hitler and his movement is history now, but human nature has not changed. We still pin our hopes on anyone who even talks about competence and vision—which are qual ities we need to develop in ourselves, not look for in others. But we are disarmed, for usually an influential creature comes cloaked in the garb of respectability, beguiling even himself in his dapper uniform, his politicians’ pinstripes, or the venerated robes of religion.

How many of us are aware of Executive Order 11921? (Federal Register, Vol. 41, No. 116, June 15, 1976.) Should any President find (or desire to create) a cause to declare National Emergency, this Executive Order allows the following: complete government censorship, usurpation of all production and distribution facilities (food, water, power, health services), management of all highways, streets, aviation equipment and facilities, plus more. It means complete control of the ways and means of our lives, if our leader even calls a situation a national emergency.

I’m less concerned over that likely event than I am over our blind reaction to it. Weary of our national malaise, concerned about world events, eager to have a renewed sense of direction, will we fall into the People’s Temple trap? Will we, in fear and in gratitude, further empower a President with the surrender of our rightful responsibilities? In an emotional orgy of martial music and slick slogans, will we confuse our individual ethics with “our leader’s” personal ambitions?

Will generations hence wonder that we were impressed with a man’s religious and dedicated attitude, that we were delighted with his righteous and charismatic anger? Will they comprehend how we slavishly rendered up our daily freedom, in misplaced hope and fear, to a President who could not resist “great leadership” and the “will of the people.”

I’m all for defending my country. I’ll fight if I have to, with a pen or a gun, for my family, my life, my liberty, my property. And I will join with those of a like mind, against all coercion, whether foreign or domestic. But “my leader,” in war and in peace, will have to fend for himself. I will not play Follow the Leader. The bloody footprints from that age-old con-game are smeared all over world history. I will not go down as another sad statistic, as one of millions who relied on their government and trusted in their leader.

History’s most recent reminder of our human gullibility, of the degrading symbiosis between avid leader and devoted follower, was Guyana. Jim Jones skillfully combined religion and politics to establish leadership over 1,000 conscientious and idealistic American people. How many more of us hold the same false beliefs—that our well-being is better off under the influence of a leader and his organization?

Rather than a mystery, the loss of integrity, property, liberty, and life is the logical outcome of our attachment to leaders and institutions. Degradation, despair, and death are the historically proven prices we pay for looking outside ourselves for salvation.

Our solutions lie within. Inspiration is within. What we know as God is within each individual, no more so and no less so than in any other individual.

We need only to cultivate our personal self-esteem, but in gratitude, not in arrogance. We need only to cultivate our self-reliance, but in awareness, not contempt, for the concerns of those around us. We can travel the middle path of Dignity, as neither Manipulator nor the Manipulated. We can exercise what we believe in an involved and responsible existence, but we need never sacrifice our life to the personal values of another.

Shall we in the United States blunder into a debacle, surrendering in hopeful worship and obedience to a leader who touts %he common good” and “self-sacrifice”? Millions fell for that propaganda in Germany. One thousand Americans fell for it in Guyana.

Or shall we choose to be aware and responsible individualists, whose love for our families, our country, and our God is expressed in a calculated disdain of leaders, causes, and mass movements.