Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

“Your death is necessary not because you yourself are opposed to anything, or in favor of anything, but simply because people have to keep dying in order to make clear that opposition to those in power is neither practical nor even thinkable. Your death is necessary as a kind of exorcism of the abstract specter of opposition in the minds of leaders whose dishonesty makes them well enough aware that they ought to be opposed. Two thousand years ago the death of a Christian martyr was a supreme affirmation not only of faith, but of liberty. The Christian proved by martyrdom that he had reached a degree of independence in which it no longer mattered to him whether he lived on earth and that it was not necessary for him to save his life by paying official religious homage to the emperor. He was beyond life and death. He had attained to a condition in which all things were “one” and equal to him. Cela lui était égal.”