So said Flavius Vegetius Renatus.
Often (too often) in my vast travels I come across a particularly optimistic and shallow collection of words printed on a narrow and long length of whatever material bumper stickers entail affixed to some automobile or another. These words vary but the overall message remains the same and I'll cast my minds eye back a few decades for a particularly famous anecdote to define them: Make Love Not War. In essence these bumper stickers and the ideology that buoys them assure us that violent conflict and the blood it spills could meet it's demise if we'd all simply think along the Utopian ideology emblazoned on a Saab or Subaru or Dodge bumper:
If society would simply evolve to understand and embrace equation X (take your pick of social frameworks starting from Marx, perhaps) mass conflict would simply be a thing of the past. If society would simply move to the day that various "unsavory" elements such as religion, firearms and inequality were archaic terms snickered at behind the hands of the contemporary scholars the world would collectively toss their arms around each other and war would flutter off into the setting sun like an unsatisfied vulture in search of it's next meal.
The Utopian ideal ignores the reality of the human condition. We are, physiologically, prone to advancing our own interests beyond and without regard to the interests of others. Like any other sentient being on the planet the human animal operates within much the same operation of existence.
Without delving into a deep and boring (as though this isn't boring enough) discussion of the human species proclivity for hierarchy allow me to conclude:
The feel good message of "War is not the Answer" ignores the very principles that have delivered much of human kind into the comfortable reality of present day. War or, more specifically, victory was the answer.
The message of global peace is fallacy because it entails an unrealistic vision that social evolution will somehow transcend or even obscure the realities of the real human condition. It assures that war is an aberration, peace is the norm when everything about the human species suggests otherwise. A stark example of the occasionally vast discrepancy between ideology and reality.
(Inspired by the Sake White post: The Foundation of Leftist Beliefs)
5 comments:
I think the short version is that the logical cost of ending war is the ending of everything that might cause a person to fight, kill, or die for. Love of family must be gotten rid of in one way or another to be replaced by love of something more collective or at least less potentially conflict ridden, which means loyalty to the state rather than loyalty to oneself or one's family. After all, nations are built upon the love of family, the protection that nations provide their families is returned by the love of each individual towards their nation. Thus this causes war and if war must be ended, the things that people fight for must be rendered non-existent or at least less valued.
What else must be de-valued, de-constructed, and disappeared for war to end? The obvious next logical step would be liberty. Liberty has fueled many wars and many conflicts throughout the ages, from Ancient Greece onwards. Even more than nationalism and family, the pursuit of liberty has ended many lives, both of the slave and the oppressor.
Since the United States holds the great majority of the liberty in existence in the world, it serves as a beacon and inspiration to others that such a thing as liberty is worth fighting for because it proves that you can obtain such a thing as ephemeral as liberty. It is not a slogan of the insurgent which calls for freedom from the Shah, freedom that has little meaning except on paper; ultimately in the end it is replaced by theocracy and deeper repression, rather than liberty. Given that the US is the way it is, the US must be undermined for if liberty causes wars and wars must be ended for the good of humanity, then the icon of the US must be weakened and destroyed if at all possible.
Much of these connections are simply assumed to be true, thus you don't see it often spoken of around anywhere. It is only seen by strict analysis of where actions and beliefs lead as well as where they come from, that allows the illumination of why people believe and what people believe, for them to say and do such things as they do.
Soob - I agree, but not sure where it ties in to "the foundation of Leftist beliefs." There's a small and loud slice of Leftists that are pacifist, but looking at the record of Democratic (if you consider them Left) presidents shows plenty of wars. The author of that City Journal article doesn't mention anything about linking Peace Studies to the Left.
We need to make two points about this movement at the outset. First, it’s opposed to every value that the West stands for—liberty, free markets, individualism—and it despises America, the supreme symbol and defender of those values. Second, we’re talking not about a bunch of naive Quakers but about a movement of savvy, ambitious professionals that is already comfortably ensconced at the United Nations, in the European Union, and in many nongovernmental organizations. It is also waging an aggressive, under-the-media-radar campaign for a cabinet-level Peace Department in the United States. Sponsored by Ohio Democratic congressman Dennis Kucinich (along with more than 60 cosponsors), House Resolution 808 would authorize a Secretary of Peace to “establish a Peace Academy,” “develop a peace education curriculum” for elementary and secondary schools, and provide “grants for peace studies departments” at campuses around the country. If passed, the measure would catapult the peace studies movement into a position of extraordinary national, even international, influence.
The Left is what is left of the Democrat party. And given that the Democrat party is the not the same party as Truman's, nor even JFK and FDR's, it stands to reason why it is to the left of the Democrats.
Adrian,
Like ymarsakar I don't envision every Democrat as a leftist. Joe Leiberman or Barrack Obama are (generally) liberals in the same fashion of Roosevelt but quite separated from the "classical" liberalism of Milton Friedman or the uber-liberalism (leftism) of Dennis Kucinich.
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