Insomniac Philosophy

Thinking way too early this morning, and in bullet points. Which... sure, why not.

Stew ingredients: My son, Patrick's post on his facebook page his frustration over the bureaucratic diddling over Libya; The Obama Doctrine in the Wall Street Journal; the memory of punching a bully on the school bus.

Everyone has heard that all evil needs to succeed in the world is for good to do nothing. Or something similar. Basically, when good people give up the righteous use of force, it does nothing but allow bullies, thugs and tyrants to have their way with innocents.

Which is not to say that I know that the rebels in Libya are any more likely to be good or innocent than their current tyrant is. Gadhafi is clearly a tyrant. But oftentimes, in a situation like this, the rebels simply want to install their own tyrant to tyrannize the innocent from another direction. See the Russian Revolution, among others. So... not trying to sort out who's who in Libya here... just making some general observations.

So often, in the West, there is this assumption that if we don't use force against "them," they'll certainly be sensible and come around to a more peaceful way of being, if we just explain why they should (maybe through strongly worded letters and unserious threats of handslaps). This is often considered a valid idea on the left, but there are certainly a lot of folks on the right who seem to think that the revelation that the "lion will lie down with the lamb" only requires us to want to make it so... here... now.

The problem seems to stem from the assumption that if the lamb will simply lie down with the unchanged lion, all would be well. In reality though, as it currently exists, what generally would happen if the lamb-lion initiation of togetherness were reversed from the standard description... is that there would be lamb for breakfast. Lions don't eat lambs because they are envious; because the lamb has encroached into the lion's territory; because the lamb has offended the lion with its existence. Lions eat lambs because they can. And because lambs are tasty.

From there, my mind takes a side trip into an imaginary conversation with those who favor talk over action. I've had enough real conversations along these lines over the years, certainly. For the sake of brevity, we'll just call the two sides of this conversation "Me" (yes... me), and "Cwaga" (Can't We All Get Along?). Here's how it generally ends:

Me: Tell you what... you guys get the all the bullies, thugs and tyrants in the world to give up the use of force, first. (Can't leave even one of them in non-compliance, because then he'd just terrorize everyone else. All lions must be lying down with lambs.). Then we'll talk about disarming the law-abiding and giving up on the need for defense of ourselves and innocents.

Cwaga: (brushing that aside) But that'll never happen! It's too hard!

Me: Exactly.