Since Mr. Rubin probably is sleeping as this is composed, we can talk a little volatility. The trouble with being a peace- pipe-smoking footsoldier in the peace movement is that you constantly find yourself at war with the sensible people in this country. You quarrel, vehemently, over how much you value nonviolence. You see, war sometimes actually is unavoidable. And that is our message.
Lets Leave Reality
Joining the American peace movement is like going away for the weekend. The peace movement represents an escape from reality. It is populated mostly by youthful people. They lack a rounded education and a mature understanding of the world. Their world vision appears to stop at the next street corner.
There is another simpler explanation for the peace movement being heavily skewed toward boys and girls rather than men and women in the fullness of their lives. The youthful ones have almost no experience at living, at even viewing and comprehending rounded lives. Many have not ventured beyond their neighborhoods. When the extremely slender world-view of these children is reinforced instead of expanded in the classroom, what would you expect?
You Dont Even Have to Stand
The sheer force of growing older has a magnificent effect on ones world views. You dont even have to travel. Merely survive into your 40s and 50s, and your world view will widen, deepen, ripen without any overt or conscious assistance from you. It is called the maturation process.
Therefore, even unlettered grownups tend to understand the lesson, the mainspring component that the starry-eyed peace-touting boys and girls either missed in school or are ignoring:
Bad guys abound in the world.
Cemeteries from Alaska to Zanzibar are full of beautiful thinking people who carried the same glossy, polished view of life that my pal Mr. Rubin does. They believed the images of blonde, curly-headed cherubim, floating across the pure blue skies, reclining on fluffy ivory clouds, strumming golden harps, represented the true infrastructure of daily life. Whether the name is Muhammad or Patrick or Adolf or Kawasaki, we are all members of the same human race, say the peace preachers. We are separated, but scarcely, by insignificant cultural nuances. They also believe that if you could draw the so-called bad people to the negotiation table, the bad people would see the unadulterated warmth and love that radiates from your heart and mind.
Sometimes, War Cant Be Helped
Under the heading of Unavoidable War comes this note: No matter how badly you want to attain peace, sometimes you cant have peace unless you first shoo away bad guys who dont want you to live in peace. No, pal, you cant talk the bad guys out of disturbing your peace. They want what you have. It would be nice, as Mr. Rogers used to tell us when he still was living in his neighborhood, if we could sit down, drape an arm over the shoulders of the person next to us and say, Freddie, lets work this out. But, you see boys and girls, little Freddie does not believe in peace. Therefore, you may have to send the women and children inside while you duel Freddie for supremacy. Normally not a suspicious person, why do I suspect this component has been overlooked by our dear friends in the educational realm.
Postscript
How do the boys and girls who burst out of their classrooms, hoisting signs saying, We Believe in Peace, think that we have reached this stage of civilization in America?
Were they too busy studying global warming or ways to end world hunger, world poverty, world homelessness? They should have been studying lessons of the history of the world, the history of the United States.
