Dangerous Relativism

Marcos and Ninoy, walang pinag-iba sa kanila, according to MLQ3's guest "explainee", an 18-yr. old student from La Salle.

THE other day, my “explainee” on “The Explainer” was a young student leader from De La Salle University. He’s been giving his elders high blood pressure because of his unorthodox views. Since he’s only 18, I asked him how much of his thinking was his own, and how much was influenced by his teachers. He said that his grade school and high school history lessons were about how bad Ferdinand Marcos was; but in college things were different. He spoke highly of a history professor who, he said, was unorthodox in that he simply provided the facts, and then allowed his students to reach their own conclusions.

What the young student believes he said clearly and nicely enough when he appeared on ANC on Ninoy Aquino’s death anniversary. He argued that as far as he was concerned, there was no difference between Marcos and his nemesis, Ninoy Aquino but, as he himself told me, on the whole, Marcos at least did a lot for the country. “He built the most infrastructure,” he said. He suggested that as long as a president builds roads and bridges and creates jobs and provides health services, that is enough to make him great -- as he seems to think Marcos in retrospect was. And besides, who says Marcos had Ninoy killed? he asked.

Cory Aquino apparently felt concerned over what the young student felt, and reached out for some sort of dialogue to help convince him of the error of his ways. “My parents were nervous,” upon hearing that, he said. “After all, she is a Cojuangco.”

This, perhaps, was the most surprising statement of all: That his parents couldn’t see beyond Ms Aquino’s family affiliation, or even consider that she represented something more important than what seems to be their view of the Cojuangcos as being rather thuggish. That the student couldn’t see beyond infrastructure or the reasons Ninoy, despite the suspicions and even hostility felt by some toward him, could overcome them and become a hero for a generation of Filipinos, becomes more understandable in that light.

Maybe yan ang dahilan kung bakit natin pinaguusapan ngayon ang Restoration ng mga Marcoses sa mata ng publiko. Eto pa sabi ni Kuya Manuel:

The student’s views should provide an opportunity for sober and critical reflection by the De La Salle brothers whom I hold in the highest esteem, beginning with DLSU president Brother Armin Luistro and the provincial, Brother Dodo Fernandez, who are sincere patriots and willing to take DLSU in a direction more in keeping with St. John Baptist La Salle’s obsession with serving the poor (the traditional, upper-class identity of La Salle in the Philippines is miles apart from the norm among Christian Brothers schools). Poor Brother Armin has embraced the 21st century but his faculty are indoctrinating his students with a kind of seductive, and highly dangerous, relativism.

I happen to think that if an honest and objective enumeration of facts was really provided, students like that young man, never – ever -- could he or anyone else argue that Marcos and Ninoy weren’t very different and that, in the end, infrastructure puts Marcos over Ninoy. If that were so, Italians would still be pining for the Fascist era when trains ran on time, and the autobahns and Volkswagens of Germany should continue to proudly bear the swastika. It is no coincidence that a euphemism for a kind of torture during the Marcos era, was taken from the San Juanico Bridge, Ferdinand’s anniversary present for Imelda.

You have to wonder what kind of facts were presented that leave students blind and unmoved to the imprisonment of political enemies, and the evolution, intellectually, and even spiritually, of those who were detained in the New Society’s jails. But then, as Lagman eloquently pointed out, even Marcos’ victims pay him homage when they commemorate martial law on September 21. The arrests took place on September 23. Marcos chose a fictitious date, because of numerology, and eventually, to commemorate his acquittal for the Nalundasan murder on September 21, 1939.

Read this too from Conrad de Quiros.

Alam nyo, pinag-iisipan ko itong article ni MLQ3 about the Marcos Restoration.

Is it possible na makuha na ni Imelda ang pinapangarap niyang "Hero's Burial" para kay Makoy? Imelda and Bongbong tried it for a second time nung 2005. Maybe if GLORIAGATE never happened, natuloy na sana yan.

Sa akin naman, I'm against giving Marcos a Libingan burial because I don't think he belongs there. And I hope future presidents (after erap and GMA) won't even consider the idea -- not unless you want to start your presidency on an extremely divisive issue.

The only way I see Imelda can fulfill her dreams is if one of her Children manages to win the presidency. Siguro kung presidente ka na, magagawa mo yan.