August 6th and 9th mark the 60th anniversary of the only use of atomic weapons. The present nuclear danger may in part be that time transformed the horror into merely a conceptual fear. We talk about how bad it must have been and fantasize how survivors will react if it happens again. Most of the population has a rational logic insisting that nuclear war would be really awful, but no one is lying awake tormented by visceral anxiety at a threat so distant in the past and so abstract in the potential.
The left hates war and believes in error that the right likes war. The following article is a superb example of liberal reasoning and is worth reading in its entirety. I’ve selected a few passages that illustrate where I disagree with the logic and assumptions of the writers, but disagreement over the lessons of history and the principles for social organization still allows for common ground on the belief that Hiroshima and Nagasaki should never happen again.
Hiroshima Spirits, Nagasaki Voices: Learning from the First Ground Zeroes: On the one hand, the past century has seen a great deal of human introspection and understanding. … On the other hand, this past century has been a time of unprecedented death and misery, a century of human destruction and environmental degradation unparalleled in scope in human history.The 20th century unleashed industrialized killing upon the human population but I do not concede there was death and misery unparalleled in the scope of human history. Prior generations suffered plagues of unknowable causation and significantly higher lethality. The genocidal conquests of antiquity left no survivors of tribes and societies to document the atrocities and retain them in memory. The favorite genocidal outrage of the left is memorable only because war was used to stop the killing before it was completely successful.
Many of us are shaken by the world we have created or have allowed to be created for ourselves and our children and their future. Today too often we feel threatened and vulnerable. None of us is immune to violence and the threat of violence. We have allowed locally and globally an ethos of human violence that either we do not have the collective will to stop or we do not know how to stop.
We need to invoke a healing image and call to active citizenship for this post-Nagasaki age. Following Jonathan Schell, we can advocate the concept of “universal parenthood,” the idea that all of us are responsible for our fellow humans.
We too must join hands today, not only in informing the world of the horrors of weapons of mass destruction, but also in solving the human problems greatly threatening world peace; the lack of fundamental human rights and freedoms, environmental destruction, poverty and the preventable deaths of young children. … It is a call to us to build a world based on tolerance, justice, and respect for all members of the human family, including those global extremists who wish our demise.
I find it very telling the authors believe that violence and the threat of violence exists because “we have allowed” violence through our lack of “collective will” or knowledge to stop it. We know the way to stop killing is to capture or kill the perpetrators and their enablers. We are trying to use our knowledge with a tight focus and with compassion towards the innocent.
I also reject the concept of “universal parenthood” precisely because that concept ultimately leads toward the trivialization of the individual. When the good of society is defined and imposed upon individuals, no amount of words on paper will prevent the move towards oppression of dissidents. What works is when free people live and learn and tolerate the consequences of each others decisions, and accept the common good that emerges.
For sixty years, America has back tracked away from the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. What will be remembered thousands of years from now is not that the west built large nuclear arsenals, but rather that we refrained from using them. Anyone paying attention knows our current military is moving as fast as possible towards the precision use of force, at the same time our enemies overtly covet the power of indiscriminant large scale homicide. If the left truly desires to prevent another Hiroshima and Nagasaki, then they should drop the rhetoric and join the collective will to prevent nuclear zealots.
I also reject the concept of “universal parenthood” precisely because that concept ultimately leads toward the trivialization of the individual. When the good of society is defined and imposed upon individuals, no amount of words on paper will prevent the move towards oppression of dissidents. What works is when free people live and learn and tolerate the consequences of each others decisions, and accept the common good that emerges.
For sixty years, America has back tracked away from the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. What will be remembered thousands of years from now is not that the west built large nuclear arsenals, but rather that we refrained from using them. Anyone paying attention knows our current military is moving as fast as possible towards the precision use of force, at the same time our enemies overtly covet the power of indiscriminant large scale homicide. If the left truly desires to prevent another Hiroshima and Nagasaki, then they should drop the rhetoric and join the collective will to prevent nuclear zealots.
