"Alcoholics Anonymous has no
opinion on outside issues; hence the A.A. name ought never be drawn into public
controversy."
NEVER
since it began has Alcoholics Anonymous been divided by a major controversial
issue. Nor has our Fellowship ever publicly taken sides on any question in an
embattled world. This, however, has been no earned virtue. It could almost be
said that we were born with it, for, as one old-timer recently declared,
"Practically never have I heard a heated religious, political, or reform
argument among A.A. members. So long as we don't argue these matters privately,
it's a cinch we never shall publicly."
As
by some deep instinct, we A.A.'s have known from the very beginning that we
must never, no matter what the provocation, publicly take sides in any fight,
even a worthy one. All history affords us the spectacle of striving nations and
groups finally torn asunder because they were designed for, or tempted into,
controversy. Others fell apart because of sheer self-righteousness while trying
to enforce upon the rest of mankind some millennium of their own specification.
In our own times, we have seen millions die in political and economic wars often
spurred by religious and racial difference. We live in the imminent possibility
of a fresh holocaust to determine how men shall be governed, and how the
products of nature and toil shall be divided among them. That is the spiritual
climate in which A.A. was born, and by God's grace has nevertheless flourished.
Let
us reemphasize that this reluctance to fight one another or anybody else is not
counted as some special virtue which makes us feel superior to other people.
Nor does it means that the members of Alcoholics Anonymous, now restored as
citizens of the world, are going to back away from their individual
responsibilities to act as they see the right upon issues of our time. But when
it comes to A.A. as a whole, that's quite a different matter. In this respect,
we do not enter into public controversy, because we know that our Society will
perish if it does. We conceive the survival and spread of Alcoholics Anonymous
to be something of far greater importance than the weight we could collectively
throw back of any other cause. Since recovery from alcoholism is life itself to
us, it is imperative that we preserve in full strength our means of survival.
Maybe
this sounds as thought the alcoholics in A.A. had suddenly gone peaceable, and
become one great big happy family. Of course, this isn't so at all. Human
beings that we are, we squabble. Before we leveled off a bit, A.A. looked more
like one prodigious squabble than anything else, at least on the surface. A
corporation director who had just voted a company expenditure of a hundred
thousand dollars would appear at an A.A. business meeting and blow his top over
an outlay of twenty-five dollars' worth of needed postage stamps. Disliking the
attempt of some to manage a group, half its membership might angrily rush off
to form another group more to their liking. Elders, temporarily turned
Pharisee, have sulked. Bitter attacks have been directed against people
suspected of mixed motives. Despite their din, our puny rows never did A.A. a
particle of harm. They were just part and parcel of learning to work and live
together. Let it be noted, too, that they were almost always concerned with
ways to make A.A. more effective, how to do the most good for the most
alcoholics.
The
Washingtonian Society, a movement among alcoholics which started in Baltimore a
century ago, almost discovered the answer to alcoholism. At first, the society
was composed entirely of alcoholics trying to help one another. The early
members foresaw that they should dedicate themselves to this sole aim. In many
respects, the Washingtonians were akin to A.A. of today. Their membership
passed the hundred thousand mark. Had they been left to themselves, and had
they stuck to their one goal, they might have found the rest of the answer. But
this didn't happen. Instead, the Washingtonians permitted politicians and
reformers, both alcoholic and nonalcoholic, to use the society for their own
purposes. Abolition of slavery, for example, was a stormy political issue then.
Soon, Washingtonian speakers violently and publicly took sides on this
question. Maybe the society could have survived the abolition controversy, but
it didn't have a chance from the moment it determined to reform America's
drinking habits. When the Washingtonians became temperance crusaders, within a
very few years they had completely lost their effectiveness in helping
alcoholics.
The
lesson to be learned from the Washingtonians was not overlooked by Alcoholics
Anonymous. As we surveyed the wreck of that movement, early A.A. members
resolved to keep our Society out of public controversy. Thus was laid the
cornerstone for Tradition Ten: "Alcoholics Anonymous has no opinion on
outside issues; hence the A.A. name ought never be drawn into public
controversy."