The Way of the World is Force
by Charley Reese
If someone puts a .45 to your head and pulls the trigger, you are going
to die. Laws, public opinion, ethics, ideals, treaties, Geneva conventions
and personal preferences will not prevent your death.
As a Buddhist sage observed, "If you understand, the world is the way it
is; if you do not understand, the world is the way it is."
The way of the world is force. You may not like that. You may choose
not to believe it. But it is true. The world is ruled by force.
Public opinion is worthless. It will not stop a handgun, much less a
tank or a missile. Law is nothing but rules you apply after you have subdued
people by force. Laws, without being backed up by more force, are not worth
the ink they're written with.
Americans suffer from peaceitis, a mental disability. It has the same
effect as a hallucinatory drug. It makes intelligent and educated people live
in an illusory world that never has existed.
Peaceitis results from living too long in an artificial environment in
which the reality of the world is concealed from view.
Most Americans who have never seen a burned corpse, a body torn apart by
shrapnel or bullets or those peculiar mouth-shapes left by a knife or bayonet
on flesh begin to think that words and ideas are what control the world, that
any difference can be negotiated, that any conflict can be managed. They
think that if everybody is well-fed and housed, they all will be nice.
The reality is that the most terrible things are done by well-fed, well-
housed people.
A penniless, starving peasant is no more of a threat than a crippled,
starving lion. He has no power. He's probably stupid as a result of protein
deficiency. He has no education. He has no training. He has no physical
energy. He cannot make a revolution. He cannot afford a bullet, much less a
gun. He is drudge labor, sometimes useful as cannon fodder. His principal
role is to be a victim.
Peasant revolutions are middle-class fantasies, useful propaganda tools.
In reality, they do not exist and never have.
The mild form of insanity known as peaceitis most recently manifested
itself in the reaction to the invasion of Grenada. Intellectual crooks and
peaceitis victims argued that Grenada was no threat to us. Of course, Grenada
by its self was no threat to us. Grenada was being converted to a platform
for Soviet Weapons.
This was being done by a government that imposed itself by force on the
people of Grenada. We removed the threat by force.
What keeps you alive and free are nuclear warheads, tanks, rifles,
machine guns and trained warriors ready to use them. It is not economics,
philosophy, ethics, negotiations, treaties or laws. Power and the will to use
it are the only things standing between us and the grave.
People infected with peaceitis are a threat to the physical safety of
themselves and their fellow Americans. They try to prevent the use of
American power. They try to prevent the proper arming and upkeep of our
military power. In their sickness some think that military power not only is
unnecessary but is evil in itself.
You cut a throat. The rightness or wrongness of it doesn't matter to the
dead man. He is still dead. Whether the death is a good death or bad death
depends on whether you like or dislike the dead person. Whether the man dies
or lives depends solely on whether the knife thrust can be deflected and the
knife wielder killed or disabled.
You can't depend on force, victims of peaceitis proclaim. Actually, you
can't depend on anything but force. Diplomacy works only if it's backed by
force. Diplomacy itself is about force; the threat of it, the use of it, the
direction of it. Peace is nothing but the aftermath of war or the interlude
between wars. War or the threat of war is what makes a peace, or else there
is no peace.
Whether people like us or hate us is irrelevant. Our choice is to be
feared or to be a victim. There is no other choice.
|