ANOTHER EMAIL CAME ACROSS my desktop today, but this one appears to be true.
"He didn't act on reason, or on training, but on empathy and compassion—two fundamentally human traits."
It's a heart-warming story, and touches on several of the recurring themes at the daily mull.
The email version is slightly enhanced, a detail changed here and there to make a better story, so I'll give you the more accurate version from Snopes.com.
During World War II 21 year old "Charlie" Brown, the pilot of a B-12 dubbed Ye Olde Pub was on a mission to bomb a factory in Bremen, Germany.
The plane was heavily damaged, and Lt. Brown was attempting to get an injured crew back to England.
Brown glanced out of the cockpit window, and saw a German fighter plane, a Messerschmitt 109, flying alongside.
Instead of shooting the plane down, the German fighter pilot saluted the crew and flew off.
Forty-six years later, Brown managed to find the German pilot, Franz Stigler, a fighter ace credited with destroying more than two dozen Allied planes. Stigler had wondered all those years whether the B-12 had made it back to England.
"I didn't have the heart to finish off those brave men," Stigler later said. "I flew beside them for a long time. They were trying desperately to get home and I was going to let them do it. I could not have shot at them. It would have been the same as shooting at a man in a parachute."
Both men died in 2008.
The story touches on a theme I've taken up elsewhere—the basic goodness of humanity, and the fact that this basic goodness comes from our nature. I was brought up, as a fundamentalist, to believe the opposite: that our nature was violent and abusive and nasty, that only reason and training could make us behave.
But this man was going against his training, and against reason. His training would have told him to shoot down an enemy plane if he had the chance. Reason would have told him that that same plane, if it made it back to England, would be returning to bomb his country, perhaps even to bomb his family.
But his instincts were better than that. He didn't act on reason, or on training, but on empathy and compassion—two fundamentally human traits.
The story also touches on the five psychological foundations of morality uncovered by Jonathan Haidt and Jesse Graham, which I've written about here. As you may recall, their research shows that human morality grows out of five inherent values: care, fairness, respect, loyalty, and purity.
They point out that while all human morality is rooted heavily in care for others and fairness, conservatives tend to emphasize the other three values while liberals tend to let fairness and care override the final three.
The German pilot, by this measure, must be seen as a liberal. He is obviously motivated by care, and fairness (he would have gladly shot the plane down in a fair fight).
What about respect? He had respect for "these brave men", and that informed his decision, but it wasn't the kind of respect that conservatives center on—respect for authority.
Loyalty? His loyalty to his country would have led him to fire away.
Purity? Harder to pin down, but if you take the conservative slant, wouldn't you say that he was in danger of being seen as a "dirty traitor"?
Finally, what does this say about the current state of affairs in our country?
The author of the email sees this behavior as an affirmation of conservative values, but I'm not so sure.
What would happen to an American soldier who behaved this way on the battlefield today? Say, allowing a wounded group of Taliban to escape?
And, more important, where would the voices in our country come from which would salute that American's humanity, his empathy and compassion?
Would he be more likely to be honored by MSNBC or Fox? Would he be more likely to be vilified for giving aid and comfort to the enemy by a Conservative, or a Liberal?
Which side would conduct our foreign policy in a manner closer to the model of that compassionate warrior?
Odd, isn't it, that those who deny the essential goodness of human nature are exactly the people who are most like to disapprove of that same goodness?
At least, that's what I think today.
