The State of This Nation, The Philippines

I was interviewing an Xavier University 4th-year male nursing student who is keenly interested in SEO (Search Enginee Optimization), to do some work for me, and in the process he also “interviewed” me, asking a lot about what I thought about life in The  Philippines.

(Normally, I take no part in hiring and firing for my company, but this job is more of a personal hire, for someone to do research and academic-related type work, and not for client-related work.)

I ended up talking about how The Philippines is in, and has been in, a  state of change, from frontier lawlessness to a democratic land of law and order, but that the change will take at least another generation to come to fruition.  The Philippines is a land of moral conflict, not only between different political factions and families, but very much and deeply so on a personal level as well.

To illustrate my point I used the 1962 classic Western movie “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”, directed by John Ford.

James Stewart plays the part of “Ransom Stoddard”, a tenderfoot attorney, who believes in the rule of law and order, that justice is to be meted out by duly appointed courts of law and government, and refuses to carry a gun, and for good reason as he does not know how to use one.

John Wayne plays the part of Tom Doniphon, a local rancher who believes that the courts and laws do not apply to frontier territory, and that a man must carry a gun and be willing to settle his own disputes, the cowboy ethic.

Lee Marvin plays the part of Liberty Valance, a local gunslinger who works for area land barons who want the territory to never attain statehood.  Essentially, he is hired muscle by those who can afford to hire people like Liberty Valance to intimidate the locals and thereby do whatever they want.  Might makes right, the cowboy ethic, the same philosophy as Doniphon, who is really the most noble of all the characters in the movie.

At one point Doniphon says, “Liberty Valance is the toughest man South of the Picket Wire, after me”.  The “Picket Wire” refers to the Purgatoire River in South-East Colorado, which essentially places the events unfolding in the movie as happening in what is now the State of Arizona, although it is never actually mentioned in the movie, where the town of “Shinbone” is actually located.

The movie opens at the end, where Stoddard is now a U.S. Senator and past governor and congressman of an unmentioned State.  He and his wife have traveled back to Shinbone to attend the funeral of Doniphon, who by this time is a “nobody”, and Stoddard is interviewed by a reporter to find out why he would travel all the way from Washington to attend the funeral of Doniphon.

During the interview Stoddard reveals the truth of how it came to be that Liberty Valance was killed and the rest of the story is told in flash back.

Stoddard initially went to Shinbone to set up a law practice, but before he got to town he was robbed, severely beaten and left for dead by Valance.  Doniphon finds Stoddard and brings him to town where he is nurtured back to health by friends of Doniphon.

Valance terrorizes the town causing disturbance after disturbance in town and in the local saloons, and berates Stoddard witheringly.

There is a convention to elect two representatives to the territorial capital and Valance attempts to bully the locals into electing him, but Stoddard and the local “Shinbone Star” newspaper publisher “Peabody” win the seats themselves.  After this, Valance beats Peabody nearly to death and challenges Stoddard to a duel, which Stoddard accepts.

In the dark street Valance draws first and fires once at the ground at the feet of Stoddard and then once over his head, giving Stoddard, unskilled with a gun, the shakes.  As Valance takes aim to kill Stoddard, Stoddard draws his revolver and fires it, and Valance drops to the ground dead.

Stoddard becomes an instant hero, and ends up marrying the girlfriend of Doniphon, and goes on to become congressmen, governor, and senator of what becomes a new State of the United States (the name of the State is never mentioned).

Doniphon later reveals to Stoddard that it was actually Doniphon, lurking in the shadows with a rifle, that actually killed Valance, timing his shot with Stoddard’s own.  Doniphon never tells anyone this, taking this secret to the grave with him.

It was this secret that Stoddard reveals to the newspaper reporter when he returns for the funeral of Doniphon.  The newspaper editor refuses to publish the story and destroys the reporter’s notes, saying “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend”.

Valance is the only main character who does not violate his own code of ethics, even though he is really the only truly “bad guy” in the movie.  Both Stoddard and Doniphon, though each has different and contrary codes of ethics, violate their own principles, but they do so for the sake of goodness and justice, so that the law and order ethic can, in the end, prevail.

Stoddard violates his law and order by taking up the cowboy ethic and taking the law into his own hands and facing Valance on the street.  He also allows the lie to live that he was the one that shot Valance and rode the hero sum gravy-train to political power, wealth and fame.  Yet he violates his own principles to bring about law and order, to institute that which he really believes in.

Doniphon violates his cowboy ethic by not facing Valance himself, hiding in the shadows to kill him.  He also fails to face the issue of his girlfriend leaving him for Stoddard, thus allowing or causing her to go with Stoddard, which I thought was a bit of personal cowardice, though it is not relevant to what I am trying to elucidate here.

“The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” exemplifies how I see The Philippines’ state of law and order and justice.  The Philippines is still frontier land, where the government’s law and order justice is not always meted out fairly and sometimes, perhaps oftentimes, the might-makes-right philosophy, where a man must settle his own problems, outside of law, is the right way to bring about justice.

In that sense also, there is also a lot of injustice in this country.  Characters like “Liberty Valance” abound here, and they get away with robbery, murder and intimidation.  The law, the courts, the government cannot stop these people.  Sometimes such outlaws are backed by the very rich or by powerful organizations.

For the Philippines to fully come to be a land of law and order, as in “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”, the cowboy ethic is going to have to be applied to rid the country of those opposed to the law and order ethic.

In Shinbone, the moral conflicts and boundary crossings of Stoddard and Doniphon lead to the establishment of law and order and equally applied justice.  It is a story-book scenario as in “they lived happily ever after”, but The Philippines is still a nation of plurality, where injustice comes easily and justice with difficulty.

Why do I live in The Philippines if I feel this way?  Because everybody has to be somewhere, and I actually like it here, and sometimes it as if I am witnessing the birth of a nation, a nation still struggling for footing, a nation still forming finding its own way.  Filipinos may not see it that way, but I see a country that is rapidly evolving and has potential for a great future.

I mentioned this to another American Ex-pat, and he said it would be the year 2050 before law and order was fully in effect in The Philippines.  That’s closer to two generations than the one generation I had predicted, and in retrospect, I suppose he’s right.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 25th, 2008 at 03:28 and is filed under Cagayan de Oro, Globalization, Jobs, Justice, Musings, Personal, Philippines Expat Life, Philosophy, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.