Peace and Communism

One of the big mysteries of modern politics is why are the peace-niks only critical of America's military and military actions? In the '80s they protested loudly about our bombs and missles but rarely made more than a token objection to the Soviet missles that were pointed at the cities they were protesting in. Our accidental killing of an innocent through collateral damage is far more important than the terrorists targeting dozens of innocents as the primary targets. Why is a couple of US soldiers committing an attrocity in defiance of orders and policy (and being disciplined for it) more important than an enemy who commits attrocities as a matter of policy?

From a common sense perspective it is contradictory and hypocritical, but they are not thinking from a common sense perspective; they are thinking from a Marxist perspective. When a normal person thinks of peace, we view it at as the absence of violence or the threat of violence. (While the Hebrew word shalom, often translated "peace" actually carries an idea of overall well-being). The Marxist mind has been trained to consider "peace" and "socialism" to be completely interchangeable, which leads to the conclusion that "capitalistic peace" is an oxymoron or a contradictory statement because if "communism is peace" then "capitalism cannot be peace".

Now in their minds at least America = Capitalism therefore America as it currently is cannot be peaceful. Following their misguided logic, the only way to support peace is to oppose America. If we are going to successfully debate them, we need to show that their understanding of peace is wrong and that peace can and should exist under capitalism. We cannot begin to debate them until we are speaking the same language.

This is expanded a little from a comment I made last week in response to a posting on the Confederate Yankee blog