No one likes negative or depressing news stories, least of all myself. So, typically we shut off our news sources and close our eyes. We enjoy the last fleeting days of summer. We picnic. We laugh. We enjoy life. Because we can. Yet daily, they die. Daily they thirst. Daily they cry for help. This surely cant be ignored or dismissed, no matter our sensitivities or our lust for our personal well being and personal peace. Surely we cannot be deaf forever. Surely we cannot remain blind long, not while this evil continues unabated and rather emboldened by our lack of attention and especially our unwillingness to be moved to action. Why must we Americans be so like our great-grandparents in the late 1930s and early 40s prior to Pearl Harbor? Must we also be attacked in order to act for others? Why, nay, how can we think this isnt our war; therefore we should not get involved? Is our American made peace one that isnt for others? Is it for us to enjoy alone? Are we selfish with our peace? Did our peace not come with a price of peace lost for many who fought for it? Did they not value our peace more than their own? Is it right to ignore the plight of fellow human beings simply because they are not American? What kind of discriminatory people are we then in fact if we care for Americans alone? Why do we refuse to act? Did the atrocities of Hitler and our own nations unwillingness to immediately fight for the peace and very lives of others teach us nothing? If slow obedience is not desirable in our children, why is a slow, languid response to grievous atrocities okay when others so desperately need us to aid them, not only today and tomorrow, but yesterday? Why do we allow history to be repeated again and again? Many today have at least once in their lifetime criticized and openly condemned those numerous peaceful Americans of the thirties and forties who wanted to remain neutral in the worlds conflict and refused to immediately act to protect lives and pursue peace for those poor hated men and women, boys and girls in Germany and throughout neighboring European nations who were destroyed even at the beginning stages of WWII. They have judged (not wrongly perhaps) those many citizens and politicians alike who were contentedly and peacefully living in America, who feared the gravity, cost, and effect of war more than the cost to humanity of evil unhindered. Like so many of us, they simply wanted the peace they already had to continue uninterrupted, untempered. Peace at any cost has long been a mantra of many Americans. Early on, this mantra meant fighting for peace, and even dying for peace was worth the cost to ones own peace and very life. Peace was and never has been obtained through a lack of war and bloodshed. As terrible as war is, and it is terrible, the use of war is a great tool; some have used it to destroy others. Some great men have used it to gain and maintain future peace, not merely for themselves and their families but for us. We are living in that future peace, given freely to us by these faithful men, who willingly and sacrificially gave up their own peace that we might have it. Can we enjoy this peace and do less than them? Now the mantra is still repeated nearly as often as ever, yet it means something quite different to many, especially in peace groups. Peace at any cost no longer apparently costs Americans anything accept rallies and demonstrations. Americans still demand peace but they will not fight for it. Somehow peace at home and in the world must just happen. If Americans no longer war, guns are banned, and Americans feel peaceful, then they are satisfied their peace is genuine peace. But is it? Do men still die? YES! Are children slaughtered; yes. Peace isnt gained by a lack of fighting, but actively fighting for peace wroughts peace for the future. Knowing this, how can we not then condemn ourselves for not acting in this present time? Are we really any different or somehow better than those not so unlike-minded Americans some seventy-five or more years ago, who for love of their own peace dallied and doddled as the peace of thousands, yay millions of others was stripped from them? We recognize how wrong they were, and often we are grieved they did not act sooner, more nobly, more righteously. And we have told ourselves we would have done differently. Would we? Are lives less valuable now than then? Is evil less evil now? Is there not a cause? What are we doing that our ignoble ancestors did not? And how are we honoring those noble men and women who have given up their peace for our peace?
Posted on: Fri, 15 Aug 2014 20:16:43 +0000
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