Letters To A Smalltown Weekly

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Location: Gualala, California, United States

Alice and I love our life on the Northern California coast and welcome friends and family to enjoy it with us.

Thursday, April 05, 2007

One Relevant, Many Not

Editor

Relevance is not determined by numbers but by accomplishments. If one hundred thousand peace activists chanted to their crystals at sunrise on Mount Tamalpais, the world would not be moved one millimeter closer to peace.

The twenty-three million inhabitants of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea are few in number, and are leading a miserable existence that starves both their bodies and their souls. Surely the world could send a vast contingent of peace activists to North Korea and overcome their belligerence with the power of love. After all, they are Democrats and it is a People’s Republic.

During the Cold War, one security policemen standing guard over a bomber on nuclear alert, on a cold, rainy night on an Air Force flightline somewhere in the middle of Kansas, or Nebraska, or some other place where they don’t think peace comes from chanting and burning incense, did more for world peace than all the peace activists of the world for all time.

Actually, having a lot of peace activists in Muslim countries would be a great idea, except then the world would have a lot of dead and imprisoned Muslim peace activists, and the world would continue as before. Lots of North Korean, Cuban, Sudanese, Congolese, and Chinese peace activists would be a good thing too.

Among of the world’s great ironies is that the only place peace activists thrive are in peaceful places, and those places are peaceful because of victories in wars and the accumulation and development of military might.

It is sad but true that the despotic rulers of the world brutally suppress their peace protesters while encouraging others.

My offer still stands, and in over two weeks now no one has suggested a potential war that peace protesters prevented. Or one they stopped. Or even slowed.