I am a reader and contributor to the Harry Binswanger List. An e-mail list where Objectivists can calmly discuss any topic relevant to the philosophy of Objectivism. One advantage to the list is that all posts have to be kept to less than four hundred words.
In effect one has to think again.
Of course I had to cut a bit in order to post a comment on The Letter To The Editor.
Here is the final version:
I oppose pacifism.
I once clipped out a letter to the editor of
the Minneapolis Star-Tribune and taped it to back of the cover of a
notebook, but did not record the date of the letter.
To quote the emission of non-sentience:
One child dies
Regarding
Jim Klobuchar’s March 8 column, “8-year old boy died with grace and
courage, but without an answer”: Michael Blake’s mother came into WAMM
last April for information on the relationship of health-care cuts and
military increases. Her visit was motivated by son Michael’s deep
understanding that research on disease saves lives while research on
Star Wars ends lives.
Sometimes it’s so simple. One child dies. One hundred thousand children live in
poverty. We spend almost $300 billion on defense. Yet our children are left defenseless against poverty and disease.
Michael understood this. Why can’t we?
– Nikki LaSorella, co-director, Women Against Military Madness, Minneapolis.
If
consciousness is the process of identification then this letter was the
clear evidence of brain death. Here the child-like condition of
ignorance is held to be superior to clear knowledge. An eight year old
child is not normally educated in the theory of individual rights and
the history of relations with foreign nations. Nor would that child be
aware of the mass graves and other monuments to the ideologies of
totalitarian power across Europe and Asia. As well as the similar but
yet undiscovered and unnamed horrors across Cuba, China, and North
Korea.
A child can be forgiven for his lack of knowledge.
But an
adult has absolutely no excuse. This specific adult has absolutely no
excuse for the facilitation of criminal predation within our nation and
assistance given to foreign aggressors by the so-called peace movement.
The
condition of Peace in fact cannot be identified as a moral value apart
from the fundamental value of Human Life in the state of Freedom. But
LaSorella is not just a pacifist. She is clearly a Communist as well.
Her target audience in writing this letter were those persons who are
ignorant of moral philosophy and political history and wish to remain
so.
LaSorella denies the fact that the American Government
protects a society of free people against domestic criminals and foreign
conquerors. Her vision is of an entire nation converted at gunpoint to
a vast slave labor system.
Unfortunately I cannot cut the Marxist nonsense as such.
