Dan Popp
Norms!
Or: How peaceniks learned to stop worrying and love the cruise missile
By Dan Popp
Wars are fought for one of two reasons: necessity, or arrogance. Now, I'll admit that "necessity" is tough to pin down. Is it a necessity for the US to defend an ally like Kuwait? Is it a necessity to preserve "the free flow of oil at market prices?" Is it a necessity for a human being to "own" a home, or a college degree, or a cell phone? It depends on whom you ask.
Still, there are times when just about everyone agrees that we're not in actual need of killing and destruction; so to wage war would display only the arrogance of a child. Hey, what could go wrong?
Some people say there's never any need for killing and destruction, and some of those people were the peaceniks of the 1960s. "War is Hazardous to Children and Other Living Things," "War is Not the Answer," "Make Love, Not War" – these were some of their mindless slogans. Well, now the peaceniks are in power, and guess what? War is the answer – we just don't yet have a good handle on the question. And we don't call it "war."
The War Machine is now in the hands of the Free Love bunch, and they don't know what to do with it. The Peace Prize Prez is banging the drum for war, and few are marching to his beat. Except the true, choom-inhaling Flower Children.
America used to go to war for things like Independence, the Right of Self-Determination, Freedom, and stuff like that. The other day I heard our UN Ambassador, Samantha Power, explaining that the US now should go to war because of "international norms" barring chemical weapons. There's a rallying cry for you. Give Me International Norms, or Give Me Death!
Leftists upholding "norms" of any kind is just too absurd for words. What about the international norms for the family? Or norms for sexual behavior? No, in those cases the barbarians fight to abolish even the concept of norms. The word "norm" sounds too much like "normal," which implies that some human behavior is natural and good, and other acts are "abnormal" and wrong. Every 3-year-old indoctrinated by Sesame Street knows that calling things wrong is wrong.
If a norm endures long enough in the human family, it may come to be called a "tradition." A tradition can be the distillation of millions of human experiences over thousands of years. Perhaps the most undeniable human norm is the tradition of marriage; the lifelong bond between one man and one woman. Barbarians heap mountains of bile upon this norm that protects us, our children and our society – but they want us to follow them into war because of a supposed "international norm?"
Airborne chemical weapons are bad, though countries have been using them since World War I. It's my understanding that many more Syrians have been killed with conventional weapons than with chemical weapons. "Conventional" is a synonym for "traditional," and we all know how the self-styled rationalists feel about traditions. But they're happy to use traditional, conventional, normative weapons to destroy your chemical weapons because of, you know, norms.
What if – and this is only a wild conjecture – chemical weapons are a "red line" to leftists because of their effect on the planet? Kill all the humans you want (we do it every day in abortion clinics) but if you mess with the snail darters, you're toast.
If leftists tell us that the US has a "responsibility to protect" innocent lives, we should ask them, Who gave us that responsibility? God? Doesn't it violate the holy doctrine of Separation of Christianity and State for the government to acknowledge a Supreme Being? And if there isn't a God, aren't you just pretending that your wish is a moral imperative in a meaningless universe where moral imperatives cannot exist?
And one more question: With this newfound responsibility to protect the innocent, when can we expect the cruise missile strikes against Planned Parenthood facilities?
I'm just askin'.
Christian Republicans once sang, As He died to make us holy, let us die to make men free. Atheist Democrats have finally found something worth fighting for... and it's groupthink.
© Dan Popp
September 8, 2013
Wars are fought for one of two reasons: necessity, or arrogance. Now, I'll admit that "necessity" is tough to pin down. Is it a necessity for the US to defend an ally like Kuwait? Is it a necessity to preserve "the free flow of oil at market prices?" Is it a necessity for a human being to "own" a home, or a college degree, or a cell phone? It depends on whom you ask.
Still, there are times when just about everyone agrees that we're not in actual need of killing and destruction; so to wage war would display only the arrogance of a child. Hey, what could go wrong?
Some people say there's never any need for killing and destruction, and some of those people were the peaceniks of the 1960s. "War is Hazardous to Children and Other Living Things," "War is Not the Answer," "Make Love, Not War" – these were some of their mindless slogans. Well, now the peaceniks are in power, and guess what? War is the answer – we just don't yet have a good handle on the question. And we don't call it "war."
The War Machine is now in the hands of the Free Love bunch, and they don't know what to do with it. The Peace Prize Prez is banging the drum for war, and few are marching to his beat. Except the true, choom-inhaling Flower Children.
America used to go to war for things like Independence, the Right of Self-Determination, Freedom, and stuff like that. The other day I heard our UN Ambassador, Samantha Power, explaining that the US now should go to war because of "international norms" barring chemical weapons. There's a rallying cry for you. Give Me International Norms, or Give Me Death!
Leftists upholding "norms" of any kind is just too absurd for words. What about the international norms for the family? Or norms for sexual behavior? No, in those cases the barbarians fight to abolish even the concept of norms. The word "norm" sounds too much like "normal," which implies that some human behavior is natural and good, and other acts are "abnormal" and wrong. Every 3-year-old indoctrinated by Sesame Street knows that calling things wrong is wrong.
If a norm endures long enough in the human family, it may come to be called a "tradition." A tradition can be the distillation of millions of human experiences over thousands of years. Perhaps the most undeniable human norm is the tradition of marriage; the lifelong bond between one man and one woman. Barbarians heap mountains of bile upon this norm that protects us, our children and our society – but they want us to follow them into war because of a supposed "international norm?"
Airborne chemical weapons are bad, though countries have been using them since World War I. It's my understanding that many more Syrians have been killed with conventional weapons than with chemical weapons. "Conventional" is a synonym for "traditional," and we all know how the self-styled rationalists feel about traditions. But they're happy to use traditional, conventional, normative weapons to destroy your chemical weapons because of, you know, norms.
What if – and this is only a wild conjecture – chemical weapons are a "red line" to leftists because of their effect on the planet? Kill all the humans you want (we do it every day in abortion clinics) but if you mess with the snail darters, you're toast.
If leftists tell us that the US has a "responsibility to protect" innocent lives, we should ask them, Who gave us that responsibility? God? Doesn't it violate the holy doctrine of Separation of Christianity and State for the government to acknowledge a Supreme Being? And if there isn't a God, aren't you just pretending that your wish is a moral imperative in a meaningless universe where moral imperatives cannot exist?
And one more question: With this newfound responsibility to protect the innocent, when can we expect the cruise missile strikes against Planned Parenthood facilities?
I'm just askin'.
Christian Republicans once sang, As He died to make us holy, let us die to make men free. Atheist Democrats have finally found something worth fighting for... and it's groupthink.
© Dan Popp
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