The true authoritarian

RAYMUND FERNANDEZ

Who had a loving father?

Raise your hand.

No, I did not mean to ask if you love your father or not. Of course, you do.

What I mean to ask is: How easy is or was it for him to show you his love? Was he a loving father?

I have a difficult time at it.

We are not a touchy family.

We do not hug often and easily. Our hugs make up for in quality what they sorely lack by rarity.

We’re okay. We are verbally communicative.

We try hard at it since we are all very private individuals and, left to ourselves, mostly introverted.

I am not authoritarian.

But my late father was.

He believed that the universe was under control by God.

Consequently, everything should be under man’s control. It should be under the control of Authority. Authority must be hard and powerful. Strict!

Nothing there about gentleness, kindness, or even justice. And what about growing up in an environment of liberty and freedom? My father had a harder time at it. And it should not surprise me. He had lived through the chaos of war.

It is possible he longed simply for the sense of order that for him came with what he and his generation called “Peace time.”

hat name was meaningful to them in a particular way only they can fully understand. My father thought that the country would be better off with stronger and stricter leaders. He was, as I said, an authoritarian.

And I wonder now what he would have thought of how I raise my own kids.

They grow up at peace with my and their own imperfections.

They will most likely not be authoritarian.

And my wish is that when they have kids they will be firm and authoritarian with them only until they’re three years old. After that, they should raise them to love the concept of freedom just so they will not be too hard on themselves and those around them.

Just so they see how this universe cannot be too ordered or controlled by any single authoritarian entity.

Otherwise, freedom would be lost.

And then this would become a hard and difficult place. We would all be less creative and happy. See how we now lean a little too painfully close to becoming authoritarian.

My father belted me from time to time. I have forgiven him every last one; but only posthumously.

We never really talked. Though I was once his apprentice mechanic.

Notwithstanding his urge for authoritarian discipline, I choose to love and remember him for my apprenticeship. I still hate him to some extent for his authoritarianism.

But at least, he was an honest and sincere authoritarian.

He did not steal. Nor was he corrupt.

A corrupt authoritarian can only be a tyrant who does not hold up to himself the same candle he requires of others.

I used to belt my own children until they told me how wrong I was.

My own children weaned me from my own authoritarianism.

And I must remember to thank them for it.

I am a better human being now that I know that the secret of keeping our universe under better control cannot be a state of having less freedom. It can only be done by having more of it.