Tradition Ten
"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."
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