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August 20, 2007
The Peace Racket
Seraphic Secret has long maintained that some of the biggest criminals on the planet are pacifists, those murderous peaceniks who self-righteously proclaim that all violence is wrong. Inevitably, these people end up enabling some of the worst dictators on the earth, and often these moral paragons end up enabling genocide.
G-d forbid they should pick up a gun and blow away the genociders. Truth is, they are morally so confused they have no notion of right from wrong, or killer from victim. No wonder they just stand and watch as women and children are butchered. They have been paralyzed by their fashionable notions of moral equivalence.
Witness the U.N. and the various NGO's refusal to act in the killing fields of Cambodia, Rwanda, Darfur, Tibet. No, the U.N. and the NGO's prefer to beat up on Israel. Much more fun, and besides those endless petrodollars are funding who knows how many generous salaries and, ahem, "study groups."
Peace Studies, always on the left, love to attack freedom loving democracies, while cozying up to tortureres and murderers, and their latest buddies, Islamic terrorists. The Peace Studies gang used to call themselves Communists and Socialists, and then for a quick blip, Deconstructionists. But that was a bit dry, and besides, the lit-crit people claimed that territory and were ready to fight for it. So: always up for a new label, the peaceniks refashioned themselves as Peace Studies. Kumbaya anyone? Back with Beatniks. What could be wrong with peace? But make no mistake about it, the ideology is still the same murderous leftist, anti-American, anti-Israel/Jewish poison.
If you want peace, prepare for war.” Thus counseled Roman general Flavius Vegetius Renatus over 1,600 years ago. Nine centuries before that, Sun Tzu offered essentially the same advice, and it’s to him that Vegetius’s line is attributed at the beginning of a film that I saw recently at Oslo’s Nobel Peace Center. Yet the film cites this ancient wisdom only to reject it. After serving up a perverse potted history of the cold war, the thrust of which is that the peace movement brought down the Berlin Wall, the movie ends with words that turn Vegetius’s insight on its head: “If you want peace, prepare for peace.”
This purports to be wise counsel, a motto for the millennium. In reality, it’s wishful thinking that doesn’t follow logically from the history of the cold war, or of any war. For the cold war’s real lesson is the same one that Sun Tzu and Vegetius taught: conflict happens; power matters. It’s better to be strong than to be weak; you’re safer if others know that you’re ready to stand up for yourself than if you’re proudly outspoken about your defenselessness or your unwillingness to fight. There’s nothing mysterious about this truth. Yet it’s denied not only by the Peace Center film but also by the fast-growing, troubling movement that the center symbolizes and promotes.
Call it the Peace Racket.
To read Bruce Bawer's entire article, and you really should, please click here.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at August 20, 2007 02:37 PM
Comments
Seraphic Secret is private property, that's right, it's an extension of our home, and as such, Karen and I have instituted two Seraphic Rules and we ask commentors to act respectfully.
1. No profanity.2. No Israel bashing. We debate, we discuss, we are respectful. You know what Israel bashing is. The world is full of it. Seraphic Secret is one of the few places in the world that will not tolerate this form of anti-Semitism. That's it. Break either of these rules and you will be banned.
There's also Ronald Reagan: Of all the wars in my lifetime, none of them came about because the United States was too strong
That's a loose paraphrase.
Peaceniks are dangerous because they refuse to acknowledge that the culture, economic system, and government of the United States are all superior to the cultures, economic systems, and governments of the rest of the world.
That's why you have folks like Syria sitting on Human Rights commissions at the UN.
The United States is a rock of strength that maintains stability in the world simply by being. Rational actors understand that to preserve our superior system against outside influence, we must remain powerful.
Posted by: John at August 20, 2007 03:48 PM
John:
Thanks so much for pitching in.
I've never met a peacenik who did not hate America. Some say they don't. They call themselves patriots, but they are liars. They are like wife beaters who say that their wives make them do it.
Sudan and Libya also sat on the Human Rights Commission at the U.N.
The U.N. is a moral black hole.
The United States is the only nation on the planet that keeps civilization from sliding into a new dark ages. And that is why so many hate us.
Which is just fine with me. I just wish they feared us more.
Posted by: Robert J. Avrech ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.seraphicpress.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at August 20, 2007 05:25 PM