The luxury and curse of pacifism

The war in Iraq continues without letup or even an endgame in sight. Saddam Hussein has been executed and the world is a marginally better place for it. But a recent reference to Jeanette Rankin started me thinking about pacifism and pacifists in general.

To refresh your memory, Jeantte Rankin was born in Missoula, Montana, in 1880. In 1916, she became the first woman to be elected to congress, and was only one of 49 representatives to vote against America's entry into WWI. Her apologists say she declined to run again in 1918, but in fact, she failed to receive her party's nomination and really had no other choice. An avowed pacifist and isolationist, in 1940, she again ran for congress and was elected, whereupon, in 1941, she became the only representative to vote against America's entry into WWII. To no one's surprise, she again was uninvited to participate further in Montana's political life.

Some would call her a hero, and some would call her a coward. As she is a distant relative of mine on my mother's side, I prefer not to choose either term.

But one thing does seem obvious. It is easy to be a pacifist when one has nothing personal to lose. High Ideals seem more lofty than they should when the person holding them doesn't have to put their money where their mouth is, and so it is with my distant cousin, and frankly, all of her ilk.

Even today, more than a century later, there are hoards of anti-war types afield that have put nothing on the table other than their mouths. The arch-typical bearded hippies of the sixties gave nothing to this country other than a disdain for bathing, while their opinions, and the rights to hold and express those opinions, were bought and paid for with the blood of others.

I suspect I will revisit this topic again.

www.france24.com

I see that the french have brought a news channel online with the goal of presenting "the french perspective" on world events.

Who cares?

The french are simply no longer major players on the world stage. Granted, their permanent seat on the UN Security Council gives them a minor obstructionist edge on world events, but they are hardly a proactive force in those events. They are, simply, the french.

The new channel says that it will not be "anti-American", but that remains to be seen. Since the days of De Gaulle, the french have done little except be anti-American. Certainly, they have done everything in their pitiful power to block American initiatives and try to tweak the tail of the American tiger.

Let's be both honest and blunt for a moment. At this point in history, there is only one nation on this planet whose power matters, and it certainly isn't France.

HJR 2 - obscene by any standard

Here in Idaho, the voters joined their bigotted counterparts in seven other states and passed a constitutional amendment aimed solely at denying gays the right to a civil marriage and all that goes with it. One wonders exactly what the reaction would be to a similar amendment making marriage between blacks and whites illegal, or between asians and occidentals. When did discrimination become acceptable in America?

One wonders...

Theocracy lost...for now

Well, the city council elections are over here in Boise, and it's something of a relief to see that common sense won at least one round. Melissa "Brandi" Swindell was turned away in her bid to establish a theocracy in the City of Trees, but I'm betting that we haven't heard the last of her. She is, after all, a self-proclaimed "national Leader"!

The sad thing is, she may be correct. The christian right seems to be getting more and more agressive in their bid to convert our so called "christian nation" into the Nation of Christians.

I doubt that the founding fathers had all this in mind some two hundred years ago.