It's refreshing to see that, over at the oft-slobbering news rag TIME, someone can manage to offer thoughts that are based on reality, not wishful thinking, in the always-vital area of nuclear proliferation. (The emphases below are mine.)
From TIME magazine, 'Why the Nobel Peace Prize Should Go to Nuclear Weapons':
As long as a nukeless world remains wishful thinking and pastoral rhetoric, we'll be all right. But if the Nobel committee truly cares about peace, they will think a little harder about actually trying to make it a reality. Open a history book and you'll see what the modern world looks like without nuclear weapons. It is horrible beyond description.
During the 31 years leading up to the first atomic bomb, the world without nuclear weapons engaged in two global wars resulting in the deaths of an estimated 78 million to 95 million people, uniformed and civilian. "
Somewhere above 78 million people died in two world wars, within 31 years. Since 1945, how are we doing? Better, I'd say.
Is it impossible for anyone to see that so long as nukes are CONTROLLED, thus, not in the hands of those who will use them simply to advance their religious or power-hungry zealotry, that the THREAT of them in the world actually makes it a safer place? What exactly is the educational background of the dunces who think the US is a bigger threat with nuclear weapons than another country? Only the powerful, sociopathic zealots who are now kept -- barely -- in check by our having them.
Amazingly, there are calls for more centralized governing, even in what started out as what you could call the individualism center of the planet, the United States. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Bigger government is corrupt -- absolutely. Especially in the still-kicking power center of the world, the United States.
Please, wake up, or take your voice out of the argument, thanks, if you think some hands-holding, rainbows-without-storms, birds-chirping, floating cars fantasy is going to happen in your lifetime. Not going to come out of human effort alone. It's a nice sentiment. Sadly, it always reminds me of the outset of the original Battlestar Galactica, when the human powers-that-be insist, despite advice otherwise, that they can live peacefully with their aggressive enemy. Also, it reminds me of the cliche, but not irrelevant, historic blunder of UK PM Chamberlain who signed (with France) an agreement with Adolf Hitler that gave part of Czechoslovakia to the Nazis. Hitler invaded Poland only months later.
Only a stubborn cynic refuses to hope for a time of peace, but only a perfect fool believes they will be living in one sometime soon.
The world is getting more complex at the same time it is shrinking. We are in the midst of a shaping global economy that differs from the one that existed even 25 years ago. The requirement needs to be that the real troublemakers -- the centralized control dictators/theocracies, the extreme zealots, the terrorism-supporting factions -- prove to the truly democracy-oriented that they are willing to play far nicer. It is not to be the other way around. The US and its less imposing allies don't owe these people anything. But some leaders disagree. In fact, Obama seems to think the US was on a track of empire-building up to and until he became president. That's interesting from a man who uses the word "I" far more than "we".
A nuclear-free world is the fantasy of goofballs and academic arguments, yet, in the States, we now have a platitude-rich president who joins that crowd as a true believer, by his words.
Holocaust-denying, genocidal, mass-dog-killing, political-foe-assassinating, gross-poverty-concealing, terrorist-supporting, and/or Third World-resource-grifting, and other far-flung governments centered on abuses, not embarrassed by its exposure, are not interested in getting along with us. We are spoiled, misinformed, TV comedy show informed go-alongs, to them. Even those of us disgusted by the spoiled, misinformed, TV comedy show informed go-alongs. Their idea of peace is a world without your spoiled asses in it, or indoctrinated into their way of thinking.
They aren't interested in giving their people the freedoms the spoiled brats -- the super rich AND the car-driving, jeans-wearing, mobile texters -- in the First World enjoy. They are fighting for their ideals to win out, and for at-home survival. If America has its nuclear arsenal to lean on, like some bartender leaning on his 12-gauge letting the rough drunks know he means business, we might as well invite all the openness that cultural pluralism offers, invite the combustible mix of legalized recreational pot, a trust system for violent convicts, sharia law, and the wife-killing machismo of Brazil. Why not? If we cannot live by the ideas that exist, why not just live by whatever feels like it'll work, for a year, a month, a week? Why not make it a cage fight of bad social practices? Openness to the point of life-meaninglessness. In the end, the ones with some self-control and the most discipline will win. Is that you?
You best hope that living in a world like The Road Warrior is as fun to live as it is (at least for some) to watch.
Read on at the link: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1929553,00.html?xid=rss-topstories
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