War and Peace

Sunday was cold and rainy, a foretaste of soon-to-arrive winter, but this morning is almost perfect. The sun is out, a few clouds dapple the sky, the temp is 12C/54F- what could be better for a walk into town along the water? From my place I can take the quick way along Esquimault Rd or dawdle via the Songhees walkway. I like to dawdle. It's not just that Songhees is winding that makes it slower. It's just about impossible not to stop and sit on a bench for a while and watch the harbour sights, so if I'm in a hurry it's not the way to go.
A little drama: a flock of gulls foraging right about where a twin otter was landing. I'm not sure if they all got away. What were they finding in that particular patch of water that made them so reluctant to abandon it? We humans are so wrapped up in our own daily concerns that we tend to forget about the other critters who also get caught up in their daily concerns. That means obeying the demands of the belly. For seagulls, unable to store up provisions for the future beyond the capacity of its belly, as soon as one feeding is done, the next is sought. Urgently. The needs of Safety are always in tension with the need to eat.
We humans have devised ways of storage and distribution that would require a catastrophic and global disruption over a long period of time to thwart. Hunger and deprivation are no longer technical problems, but a really inept and corrupt political structure can do more to disrupt our well-being than all but the worst natural disasters. As examples in recent history I would cite the Marxist- inspired regimes in Russia and China. Stalin's collectivization program in the Ukraine, for millennia one of the breadbaskets of the world, resulted in millions of Ukrainians dying of starvation. Mao, not to be outdone, presided over the deaths of tens of millions of his countrymen. Nowadays we can readily see what Mugabe has done to Zimbabwe. Once the breadbasket of Africa, the country is starving. It looks like Hugo Chavez has ambitions to follow these examples, starting with a campaign against the investors who finance the Venezuelan oil industry.
In our western system of private property and personal innovation, where individuals reciprocally offer up their services to others, it is possible for an individual as low down in the economic order as me to live within a five minute walk of a pleasant waterway and know that my little economic contribution is enough to provide me with comfortable shelter, good food, and security. Capitalism and free enterprise are wonderful ideas. I also am glad that I live in a political culture that tolerates divergent ways of thinking with differences decided through open debate. People forget the most important aspect of freedom of debate: I have a right to be wrong and you have a right to correct me on it. This is how we learn from each other.
We Anglo Americans have lived so long in this system that we take it for granted. We live in such peaceful and prosperous circumstances for so long that we have difficulty with the idea that some people in the world hate us and want to destroy our way of life. But if you pay attention then you will know that the Marxist inspired movements have worked tirelessly against us for nearly a century. Aided and financed by the Soviet and Maoist slave states, they have done a lot of damage. The Marxists have not gone away, they live and breed on campuses all across the continent. They are joined now by the Islamists, a much older scourge with a far deeper hatred than the Soviets had. At least some aspects of western culture were valued in Soviet Russia, and even Maoist China. They may have hated traditional religion but they cultivated many of the western inspired arts. But the Islamists hate everything about us. They hate our belief in freedom of expression. They hate our belief in equal rights before the law. Democracy to them is foolishness. Emancipation of women is lunacy to them. It hasn't been easy for westerners to learn how to live together while respecting different ways, creeds and languages but we have done it. Precariously, perhaps, and always under pressure, but we have done it. Islam proclaims itself the only possible and permissible creed. Every single human on the face of the planet must submit to that creed, either as a full-fledged member or as a lower class being with no rights to protection from the law.
Because of our inexperience with people who hate us just because they hate us and have no compunction against killing us, we have a hard time understanding that there are times when we have to defend ourselves, and that means war. That means a generation or more of young people who will not have the privilege of walking along the Songhees shore without a care in the world. There are a lot of people who refuse to believe that we are in danger. They think that if we stop fighting then we will have peace. Au contraire, mes amis. The reason we have peace now is that we have had generations of citizens willing to fight to preserve our peace.
Wake up, folks