A Family of Nations, a Family of Free People

Before nations came into being, there was the tribe. And before tribes arose, there was the family. Like the family, the tribe had its patriarchs while the nation had its founders. Much of what nations do today owes its origins to the family. Thus, Abraham, the Father of Many Nations, taught us tribal dynamics while his descendant Moses gave us fundamentals on nationhood. From the Hebrews, Babylonians, Greeks and Romans, we have gradually perfected the nation as standard for global organization.

Each nation as a sovereign state has its unique set of laws, beliefs, cultural heritage and rules of governance. In their diversity, nations compose a loosely-knit worldwide community often as tenuous as the tempestuous oceans that separate them and the winds that invariably invade their borders. Under one blue sky, nations – through the United Nations -- have learned to co-exist. Somehow, this gradual convergence has helped address problems a few nations alone cannot handle.

To some extent, nations have opted to surrender their own sovereignty to the UN during times of war to allow peace-keeping forces to settle violent conflicts, such as the Gulf War. This development can be both good and bad, depending on one’s perspective. It can be good in the global scheme of things for it preserves economic and social relations. Investments and trading can only flourish in times of peace. On the other hand, no self-respecting nation desires foreign intervention in its own affairs. But with the presence of self-proclaimed global police-states, nations have grudgingly accepted the realities of international dynamics. An age of a shaky balance between national sovereignty and global supervision has emerged.

Since ancient times, the family has existed autonomously within every society. Admittedly, even the family enjoyed a limited sovereignty with its pertinent rights and privileges granted upon its members by the norms and laws of the land. Only in rare cases were such rights waived in order to promote the greater good. In like manner, therefore, nations have simply carried on this accepted practice. Hence, military force – by its inherent persuasive power -- may be imposed upon a sovereign nation to quell violence or to prevent any overspill.

The question however arises: What right do nations have to come in and solve problems for an independent nation? Is it out of real concern or out of selfish motives?

Any individual who has special interests on a neighbor’s wealth would be motivated to interfere pretentiously. The founding of the UN was supposedly to establish an equitable and just settlement of international squabbles, arising as it did from the ruins of WWII. However, certain vested interests have served to put this august organization in doubt. Powerful nations have often used the UN to pursue less than altruistic motives.

The supreme ideal of a single family of nations based on the precedent ideal of the brotherhood of all human beings is the only solution to the spiraling conflicts among nations today. But who establishes the rules for this ideal? Is this not like the delicate and devious “religious” issue that traces back to the time of Abraham, Isaac and Ishmael? Why should two brothers who share the same parent and the same heritage of prosperity now look at each other with grave suspicion? How could an ancient family problem still haunt us thousands of years after and not motivate us to face it wisely with brotherly affection? What religion are we talking about here when our own survival is at stake?

In the beginning, there was only the family: the divinely-conceived essential pattern of human relations that has not outlived its usefulness or its effectiveness. Only when people do away with this ideal that things go awry. Only when people choose something else in place of its efficient dynamic power that they realize that chaos results rather than progress. Only when people disregard the undeniable blood relations they have by virtue of their one family origin that they find out they are really destroying themselves.

Like Cain, nobody destroys the family and lives to savor the consequences. Like Hitler, nobody cuts the filial bond that exists among all people and rejoices in the alienation it creates. Like all colonizers, nobody built a nation today or in the past by the sweat and toil of foreign slaves and remains in control forever. The family is the first and last bastion of freedom. Unless we go back to its pristine promises, we will continue to drift in the wilderness.

At any level, the family gives and preserves life. Only a strong family of nations can assure us we can live peacefully together on this planet. Only a global family of free people will bring us a lasting environment of tolerance, cooperation and prosperity.

(Photo above: Kids cool off in the backyard beach. Tuazon family.)