While enjoying plate-sized pancakes in my favorite diner recently, I spied a woman with half-dollar peace symbols dangling from her ear lobes. No big deal, my life brings me into contact with hippies all the time. But we weren't at an anti-war demonstration. We were just having breakfast.
Get a grip, UltraC, I can hear some saying, they're just earrings. Woman's got a right to wear 'em, got a right to her own opinion, you militaristic, right-wing extremist, you! Quite right, she does. But consider this: Be it earrings, T-shirts, bumper stickers, what have you, we display certain icons because they reflect our interests and passions. With those earrings, the woman is communicating her interest in and comittment to peace. That's cool. Any rational person prefers peace over war. So does her gaudy display of peace symbols imply the rest of us aren't as committed to peace? I think it does.
As for myself, I would agree with that sentiment. I'm probably not as committed to peace as she is, for I recognize that peace, in the absence of force to protect that peace, is not a lasting peace. Think of the Cold War: Numerous skirmishes around the globe, but in the grand scheme of things, the threat of nuclear annihilation ultimately kept the superpowers in check. Both sides having the bomb actually benefited mankind: The Soviet Union's million-strong Red Army was never able to realize its potential following WWII. The USSR had to act through agents to promote political change. The US only used it's most powerful military weapons twice in armed conflict. Following that, it was compelled to abandon its pre-war isolationist policies and become the biggest promoter of democracy in the world. Nuclear war made the prospect of total war simply too costly, but only so long as each side believed the other had the capacity to follow through on threats.
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