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Re:And with that I've said my peace
No, Doc, I'm not interested in shutting you up, nor am I interested in shutting-up people like conspiracy buff Rebecca Blood (who said the Bush Administration secretly planned and carried out the WTC attack in order to build an oil pipeline through Afghanistan) and web newbie Jason Kottke, the font technician who's miffed that the War Blogger Book isn't going to include anti-American essays. What I am interested in is people expressing their ideas clearly and plainly, dropping the hypocrisy that says you're either pro-war or pro-peace, and discussing the history of web logging with some degree of accuracy, if at all. You've made the allegation on several occasions now that you're reluctant to express your pacifist views because you get hostile (possibly threatening) e-mail when you do. You've also attempted to create a large myth that a majority of the weblogging public is pacifist, but reluctant to say so because they fear retribution for such a noble and heroic stance. With all due respect, I know, as I suspect you do as well, that this is a load of crap. The only retribution that you or your pacifist buddies need to fear, genuinely, is ridicule. If you're going to say the things you say above - "[advocating peace is] a matter of taking sides against sides" and "it's a plain fact that to advocate war is to advocate killing and death," you open yourself up to criticism as either a hypocrite or a moron. People who advocate a military response in a particular situation do so in the interest of peace, not in the interest of permanent war; think World War II. People who advocate pacifism are simply willing to sit back and tolerate killing and brutality in the interest of maintaining their self-concept as morally superior beings. War stops brutality in its tracks; pacifism tolerates it, and in many cases, stimulates or provokes it. Bin Laden himself said he felt comfortable attacking the US because he believed we were too weak to fight back. Weakness begets violence, and pacifism in the face of brutality is moral weakness. Finally, I'd like for you and others who've been blogging for a while to drop the false claims that the Original Bloggers are all pacifist or lefty. I've been doing this longer than any of you, and I'm a card-carrying warblogger. I spent too much time with Gandhimen in India during the 70s and 80s to think there is any way out of the terrorist dilemma except through a strong, principled, and effective military response. There are responses to this message:
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