A Hero

  When a young man joins the military and goes off to a foreign land to kill strangers, we call him a hero.  If one of the strangers happens to kill him, we call him a fallen hero and remember him on Memorial Day.  The young man travels to the foreign land with the blessing of his country.  He carries the nation’s flag with him and wears the nation’s uniform.  His target is the uniform of the enemy in that foreign land or its civilians.  This sounds crazy to me, but to most it is called patriotism and is applauded.  Their strongest argument would be: “Well, that’s the way it is and the way it always has been” or “What about Hitler and World War II?”

   To answer “That’s the way it is and the way it always has been” I would say, in the early 20^th Century women did not have the right to vote in America.  In 1919 that was the way it was and the way it had always been, but it didn’t make it right or just.  Today we sell war weapons to civilians with little or no regulation.  Seventy percent of our population would like to see effective gun regulation, but “that’s the way it is.”  If it is wrong, why not correct it?

   Now for Hitler.  If the young men of Germany had been capable of individual thought, they would not have put on the uniform or picked up the weapon.  But their heroes are the same as ours.  They sacrifice for God & Country.  The question is, does God truly ask for that sacrifice and does Country have a right to ask?  Did our young men have to respond to the actions of the young men of Germany eighty years ago?  Of course they did, but the leader of Germany made some bad choices and the population needed not to comply.  As a pacifist I am asking for individual moral rudders to steer the ship.  It would be a better world.  Is there any chance that individuals will stop mindlessly following their leader into war?  Probably not.  So the hero will always be willing to travel half way around the world to kill or be killed by a stranger.  “That’s the way it is.”

Cheers, Old Buz, The Pacifist      May 29^th, 2024

“I believe two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, but I’m not sure about the universe.” – Albert Einstein