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War 45, Peace 4
Number of times a word was mentioned during last night’s GOP debate (see disclaimer at bottom). Is there a problem here?
Terror/Terrorist/Terrorism 75
War/Warplane/Warrior/Warfare 45
Attack 47
Fight 42
Destroy 23
Bomb 16
Punch in the nose 1
Democracy 7
Freedom 6
Hope 5
Peace 4
Diplomat/Diplomacy 0
Compromise 0
Optimist/Optimism 0
Burundi 0
Nigeria/Boko Haram 0
Afghanistan/Taliban 2
Immigrants 5
Refugees 28
Tough 16
Nice 5
I am/I will/I can 37
I am not/I will not/I cannot 3
I went back and looked at the Reagan Carter debate of 1980. Here are the totals for these words. Remember that Iran was holding US hostages and the Soviet Union had invaded Afghanistan one year earlier:
War 20
Peace 25
Diplomat/Diplomacy 5
Punch in the nose 0
Disclaimer: I compiled this myself by using “Find on this Page” on the Time transcript page. This means that some totals may be off by a point or 2 or 3 (but likely not more), because “Find on this Page” also counts the words that appear in the margins or at top or bottom of the page, for example other Time headlines. If there are any errors, they are on the upside, meaning that some tallies may be inflated (again only by a few points) but none are underestimated. Peace is still no more than 4 and Compromise still no more than zero.
Published in General
What do you mean?
War and bombing aren’t going to work. The moderate Sunnis are afraid of ISIS but they are more afraid of Iran and the Shia. Therefore, we needed to hear more about a political settlement.
Marion, war is always the answer. It works, even if it doesn’t work, because if it doesn’t work it just means there wasn’t enough war.
They used to say that in Germany around 1913, and when it didn’t work because there wasn’t enough of it, they said it again in 1938.
But outgroup! Ingroup would never be so wrong/evil/stupid.
War is- violence- unfortunately, the natural state of mankind. You can have 9 peaceful people and one warlike person, and the the state of the society will be war.
Barack Obama and John Kerry believe that using peaceful words is the key to love, joy, peace, etc. They are fools, and their illusions have damaged the world indescribably.
I would expect a Republican debate to be more realistic and sensible, dealing with humanity as it exists. Rand Paul is a notable exception, of course.
After watching that debate, I wonder how many people came away with the impression that terrorism is one of the leading causes of death in the United States.
I’m pretty sure this is false, or at least far too simplistic. For instance, if the 9 peaceful people refuse to do business with the 1 “warlike” person, how does the warlike person have the funds (or even food) to do much damage? There’s nothing that says you can’t legitimately defend yourself from an attacker, but there’s really no way to fight a war of self defence that doesn’t violate every common idea of self defence.
Every war is cast as self-defence or as eliminating evil to get people to sign on (for a short easy war, not a real war).
I also believe that the commonly held unthinking belief that “war is the natural state of man” has caused more wars than was ever necessary. I mean, this is why millions of people died in WW1. War was something that just had to happen so let’s make sure not to question that “wisdom.”
I’m confused. Radical islam is at war with us, and our current President has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that pretending we can be nice to them and get them to stop (your “political settlement”) simply won’t work, but you seem to be criticizing the Republican nominees for not embracing the Obama Policy of sticking our head in the sand.
Full disclosure, I did not watch the debate last night so it may have been too bellicose , but put me on the list of people that disagree with the premise of your post.
FWIW, when criticizing candidates for being overly bellicose, I would not put the of the words “war” and “warplane” in same category.
Or even warrior for that remember. Remember Clinton though the highest and best use of our warrior class was to act as traffic cops in war torn countries where they were allowed to shoot at our “warriors” but we were not allowed to shoot back (which kind of makes them not warriors, but that is a topic for a different day).
This idea that we can bomb them into submission won’t work, unless you kill a very large number of civilians. And if you do, you will have the Sunnis on your back for decades. Best to cut a deal with the Russians imo.
I went back and looked at the Reagan Carter debate of 1980. Here are the totals for these words. Remember that Iran was holding US hostages and the Soviet Union had invaded Afghanistan one year earlier:
War 20
Peace 25
Diplomat/Diplomacy 5
Punch in the nose 0
I agree, you can’t bomb your way to victory, you need boots on the ground but otherwise, put me on the list of people that disagree with you.
If your point is, don’t engage in a war you don’t want to win, I agree. But we didn’t start this war, so we either win or lose. Those are our only choices.
A non-student of history, OK- drink the Kool-Aid. The heart of man is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. John “Imagine” Lennon was a phony who broke up his musical group and lived like the millionaire he was.
Well, you see, the one guy kills about 5 of the other 9 and takes all their things. Then he tells the remaining 4 or so people that if they don’t do what he wants that he’ll kill them too.
That’s just the problem these days. We say war. But we don’t actually mean war.
Except the one guy who’s got a nickel-plated-nine-trigguh. He blasts the one guy, but accidentally hits one of the other three survivors, so the entire incident becomes an issue of gun control.
Question: how many years of recorded history do we have?
Question: of the number above, how many of them were without war?
I don’t know the answer to either question exactly, but I think the answer to the first is “a lot”, and to the second “a few”. So I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that the natural state of man is to be at war, in some sense. It may not be the natural state of all men, but it sure seems to be the natural state of mankind.
When the mayor of Baltimore announced that law enforcement would let the protesters have some room to express their grief, we saw the true nature of man in the result.
I think the natural state of man is to give near infinite weight to the status quo of their own culture and vanishingly small weight to how assumptions have changed over time.
Metaphysically, most people don’t believe might means right, but this seems to break down when the rubber meets the road. Then it’s just a matter of hoping the people with the might also happen to be objectively moral. But that leaves the question of if you can both be objectively moral and wage war…
The answer is yes. To not wage defensive war is immoral.
When most people invoke the word “war,” most of their normal moral reasoning is thrown out the window. Suddenly it’s OK to murder a bunch of people that were born in the wrong place or are in the line of fire. It’s typically not in most people’s calculus that you can thrown a grenade into a crowded room to get someone that could potentially do harm to you.
And if you are the one in the room and someone is going to chuck a grenade in and kill a bunch of people? What do you do?
Wish I wasn’t unlucky enough to be in that room.
I don’t think this is a realistic possibility.
They’d certainly come away with the impression that it’s a leading cause of terror.
**Cliche Alert**
Peace is not simply the absence of war.
There are many millions of people out there arming and training themselves to use very violent tactics to force everyone else (ie. us) to give in to their socio-political demands. They have backed up threats with very effective actions against us. It is one of governments most basic functions to protect us from such actions. It should be discussed in my opinion and peace is an idiotic answer to the conflict that we’ve had forced upon us.
It wasn’t discussed 25 years ago. That’s cute. There seems to be every indication today that it should’ve been discussed more then instead of less now.
These words counts don’t mean much out of context. Did Reagan say, “Peace through strength”? Oh, well, he said “peace” so he must care more about peace than war! No kidding… Nobody likes war. But “peace through strength” is not a hippie saying. Might Bernie Sanders say, “War is not the answer”? He said “War”! They’re only talking about war!