Of Rodney King and Neville Chamberlain
American democracy is hampered by the failings of our educational system. It's not just that Americans have increasing difficulty reading, writing, and doing sums without a calculator; even more fundamentally, we, as a people, have a degree of difficulty unprecidented in our history in simply thinking logically.
True, part of the problem is the degree to which emotion has filled the place once occupied by reason in our approach to the world. But our increasing national distain for logic has also resulted in an increasing inability to use logic as a tool.
"Peace movements" and pacifism generally are to a considerable extent manifestations of these two, related failings. The leading political, philosophical and even theological light of our time seems to be, of all people, Rodney King, and our politics, worldview, and faith more and more seem to boil down to a simple-minded "Can't we all just get along?"
Well, in a word, no. There are evil people with ugly ambitions in this world, and the resources to do something about them. Neville Chamberlain learned the lesson the hard way, and a large percentage of our population seems bent upon ignoring it, to our cost and to the cost of the world in which we live. But the fact remains- as Thomas Sowell points out- that peace movements, as a rule, don't bring peace.
They bring war.
True, part of the problem is the degree to which emotion has filled the place once occupied by reason in our approach to the world. But our increasing national distain for logic has also resulted in an increasing inability to use logic as a tool.
"Peace movements" and pacifism generally are to a considerable extent manifestations of these two, related failings. The leading political, philosophical and even theological light of our time seems to be, of all people, Rodney King, and our politics, worldview, and faith more and more seem to boil down to a simple-minded "Can't we all just get along?"
Well, in a word, no. There are evil people with ugly ambitions in this world, and the resources to do something about them. Neville Chamberlain learned the lesson the hard way, and a large percentage of our population seems bent upon ignoring it, to our cost and to the cost of the world in which we live. But the fact remains- as Thomas Sowell points out- that peace movements, as a rule, don't bring peace.
They bring war.
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