USS Clueless              Voyages of a restless mind

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Stardate 20011105.1143 (On Screen): After returning from my vacation last week, I have spent a couple of days catching up with the writings on various web logs and other sites I follow routinely. But I kept putting off one with dread -- Lileks. That's because I knew what would happen: in my diseased state, he would keep making me laugh and every time would set off a coughing episode. It's a plot, I tell you; he planned the whole thing to have revenge against me for my comments about Minnesota. He knew ahead of time what I'd say and planned for it. Curse you, James! Your fiendish plot is revealed for all to see! Back, I say, back to the depths of the X-files from whence you came! (He probably had someone in Vegas infect me.)

Anyway, in one of his columns he mentioned someone I'd never heard of before, Colman McCarthy. So off to Google I went, to see what this individual might have written.

Folks, may I present to you a priceless fool? I couldn't create a strawman as extreme as this guy, even if I wanted to try. Check him out:

The first class of every semester I ask my students, "Is anyone here armed?" No one has ever raised a hand. "You are all armed," I reply. "You're armed with ideas, and you're in school to become armed with more ideas."

Occasionally a student will come back with the charge that I asked a trick question. Of course I did. Nonviolence is a tricky subject. The beauty and sanity of it doesn't get into our heads easily or automatically. It takes years and years of study. Why do we dismiss nonviolence so quickly by saying that it's a wonderful theory but unreal, yet we are willing to go slowly with other complex subjects?

Because it doesn't take years and years of study to realize that you can't stop someone shooting you by thinking good thoughts in their general direction. I give years and years of study to ideas which deserve that level of consideration, but many don't. To unilaterally adopt non-violence is a form of suicide.

But more to the point, it mistakes goals for means. "Being at peace" is like "being rich". If you're rich, you don't have to work for a living; you can live in idle luxury. Being at peace means you don't have to struggle with anyone. But you can't become rich by ceasing to work for a living; all that does is land you on the street. Equally, ceasing to struggle will get you mugged or killed. You can't just decide to live as if you were rich; it doesn't work that way. By the same token, you can't just live in peace if no-one will cooperate with you. "Peace" is a condition that everyone must agree to, or it doesn't exist. The only way one side can unlaterally create peace in a struggle without using violence is by surrendering.

Of course, that was written ten years ago. Think he's changed since then (or since 9/11)? Heck no! Here's an interview with him published 3 days after the bombing and he's advocating no reprisals. So how to break the cycle of violence? "The same way you break the cycle of ignorance -- educate people." In other words, we vanquish al Qaeda not by sending in the Rangers but by sending in the First and Second Armored Teachers divisions. (Let's get those education colleges cranking out graduates, OK? I think we're going to run through a bunch of them, considering that teaching anything in opposition to Islam is a death-penalty offense in Afghanistan.) (discuss)