Fighting for Peace

Yesterday was World Peace Day. There didn't seem to be many activities in conjunction with it.

A local library in Redford did hold a meeting of teen to discuss ways of promoting peace. That's okay so far as it goes, of course. But how far can it go?

One of the problems with promoting peace is that it's not unlike promoting war. Or promoting cars or trips to the movies or food. Peace and war, like it or not, are in truth moral neutrals in and of themselves.

We can use our cars wrongly, we can watch the bad movies, we can eat too much or what is bad for us. Likewise, we could demand peace when war is the better ethical option. And it is sometimes the better moral choice, no matter how awful the actual fact of it may be.

Further, promoting peace only really works when all parties involved want it. What did the wish for peace gain the peoples of Austria and Czechoslovakia in the years before the Second World War? In fact, it was only the desire for peace on the part of Great Britain and France which allowed the sacrifice of those nations to Hitler. That's hardly a clarion call for peaceful methods: they kept the peace, for awhile, at the price of someone else's sovereignty.

So when asked if you support peace, don't be afraid to ask the next and perhaps most important question: under what circumstances? Because to itself, peace only means the lack of violence. There are times when the overall cause of peace must be defended by the sword.