Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
War, Peace, and Human Nature
Congresswoman Barbara Lee has proposed a new federal Department of Peacebuilding. Aside from the problem that we don’t need another federal department of anything at a time of serial $1 trillion deficits and nearly $17 trillion in aggregate federal debt–and aside from the fact that Congresswoman Lee probably does not mean training occupation troops to follow combat units to quickly help in pacification and rebuilding in the fashion that we did not in Iraq in spring 2003–why is her proposal mostly asinine?
In the past I’ve probably written too much about why we have too many peace-something programs and not enough inquiry into the history of what causes wars and how they are prevented or their effects ameliorated. The nuclear sword of Damocles, the rapidly changing world of technology, the enormous increases in both Western affluence and leisure, and the explosive spread of universities and colleges all contribute to the notion that wise men and women can teach their inferiors not to act so irrationally as to revert to our primitive selves.
