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UW community looks for peace
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In the midst of political and international turmoil, the University of Wisconsin held a Peace Day rally Sunday addressing members of the Madison community about international conflicts and how to attain peace.
In honor of the International Day of Peace, the rally was held to raise awareness and participation by students and members of the UW community regarding ways they can help achieve peace, said rally organizer Todd Brogan.
“We hope here that people realize that peace is not just some idealistic thing that can’t actually happen,” Brogan said. “It’s something that can truly happen, and specifically it’s something that they can take part in.”
Frank Paynter, co-founder of the Madison Area Peace Coalition, spoke about the many areas in the world that are in a state of conflict right now as well as how United States foreign policy has affected these areas. He also said few people in the U.S. understand the true effects of conflict.
“We work, we study, we entertain ourselves, and for most of us the cost of conflict is indirect, barely felt and easy to bear,” Paynter said.
UW political science professor Howard Schweber, the keynote speaker, said to gain peace in the world, we must first reflect on ourselves.
“Peace worth having also requires a willingness to pay another, very different kind of cost, a cost to our own most deeply ingrained selves,” Schweber said. “To attain peace among warring nations requires a willingness by all participants to give up some element of their own, authentic identities.”
Schweber added society is bombarded with claims of authentic identity from both the political left and right, each having their own solutions and ideas. However, neither side takes the time to question its own impulses or motivations, leading to further division and tension, which can only be solved when people start to analyze and reconsider their own beliefs.
“To give up elements of our authentic selves is to pay a heavy price,” Schweber said. “To stand at a certain literary distance from ourselves, to view ourselves with a degree of ironic detachment, means to be forever not quite sure about the answers to the most important questions.”
The rally also included a moment of silence, ended by the ringing of bells at UW Music Hall to honor all people who “lived, served and died in conflict zones,” Brogan said.
Addressing the students, Brogan added that no matter how powerfully people feel about their own identities or cultures, deep down we all value human dignity for ourselves and others. He added the only way we can enjoy that dignity equally is to have peace.
“If you leave today with nothing else, know that this is not symbolic, that you can take your words and you can act on them,” Brogan said.
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Peace will not happen until the people stop paying for war. I propose a federal tax revolt: pay your federal taxes to your home state instead of the IRS. Defund the warmongers and peace will finally be at hand. Otherwise, continue to suffer the anger and hatred of the world for your ambivalence and indecisiveness.
It’s your government, your leaders and your tax dollars that they use to pay for it all. All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
Schweber said. “To attain peace among warring nations requires a willingness by all participants to give up some element of their own, authentic identities.”
That bloviation is utterly delusional. What is necessary to attain peace among warring nations is for one side to surrender. There is no substitute for victory.
Patriotic Americans will not be lulled into surrendering their American identity for some chimeral promise of “peace” through “ironic detachment.” I don’t care how many bells these globaloney vendors ring and genuflect to the empty-suits at the U.N.
Schweber whined: “deep down we all value human dignity for ourselves and others.”
Wrong again. Deep down, our Shinto-fascist enemies didn’t value human dignity for others. Neither did Nazi-fascist stormtroopers. Neither do today’s Islamo-fascist terrorists.
Americans can’t afford to be deluded by these siren calls of defeatism. There is evil in this world— and some evil men chose (deep down) to embrace it. When they wage war on free people, moral actors have a duty to identify them as enemies of mankind— and to defeat them.
You can wring your bells ‘til the cows come home. It won’t change the nature (deep down) of our Islamo-fascist terrorist enemy. Only permanent dirt naps will do that— just ask the Shinto-fascists before them.
Except for ending slavery, fascism, nazism and communism — war has never solved anything.
Geniuses— The point isn’t that war hasn’t solved problems. It’s that we shouldn’t have to get to that point to solve them.
Wow. Mr. Anonymous is on a roll. As I was attaching my “I’d Rather Be Waterboarding” sticker to the old HumVee over lunch I had a chance to reflect on the comment above, the one that oozed under the door at 11:05am. War didn’t end slavery. It didn’t even really end the African slave trade. Read Kevin Bales’ “Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy.” War didn’t end communism. The Soviet Union collapsed under the weight of its own economic problems.