After World War II, Winston S. Churchill delivered his famed address warning of the descending Iron Curtain across the captive nations of Eastern Europe. Critics said Churchill engaged in unnecessary warmongering with an allied nation. His address was given at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo. Churchill declared in his address:
Our difficulties and dangers will not be removed by closing our eyes to them. They will not be removed by a mere waiting to see what happens; nor will they be removed by a policy of appeasement . . . From what I have seen of our Russian friends and Allies during the war, I am convinced that there is nothing they admire so much as strength, and there is nothing for which they have less respect than for weakness, especially military weakness.
Author Bruce Bawer wrote an article for City Journal titled, “Peace Racket: An anti-Western movement touts dictators, advocates appeasement—and gains momentum.” Bawer notes the dangers of many of the modern peace study programs at colleges and universities, and their transparently one sided evaluation of any armed conflict, and hatred for traditional Western world-views. Bawer notes:
We need to make two points about this movement at the outset. First, it’s opposed to every value that the West stands for—liberty, free markets, individualism—and it despises America, the supreme symbol and defender of those values.
Second, we’re talking not about a bunch of naive Quakers but about a movement of savvy, ambitious professionals that is already comfortably ensconced at the United Nations, in the European Union, and in many nongovernmental organizations. It is also waging an aggressive, under-the-media-radar campaign for a cabinet-level Peace Department in the United States.
The author also notes the founder of this movement to be a 77-year-old Norwegian professor named Johan Galtung, who established the International Peace Research Institute.
According to the author, Galtang is “in fact a lifelong enemy of freedom.” He goes on to cite example after example of Gultang’s hatred of Western and American values, and “denounced anti-Communists as warmongering crypto-fascists.” Bawer also says:
Galtung, who helpfully revised Lenin’s theories to account for America’s “indirect” imperialism. Students acquire a zero-sum picture of the world economy: if some countries and people are poor, it’s because others are rich. They’re taught that American wealth derives entirely from exploitation and that Americans, accordingly, are responsible for world poverty.
Christian pacifism is of course a legitimate part of Christian history and practice, even if not the dominant position traditionally held by ministers and theologians. These defenders and guardians of peace are however not working from any Christian understanding. In fact, the author cites an example of the peace study programs that work from and prop up new age philosophies.
One should obviously lean to uplifting the powerful witness and practice of peace, which was so perfectly modeled in the incarnate Christ. This article at the same time will surely be disturbing for those who believe in faith and freedom, and that it is a value and gift worth defending. Furthermore the article addresses the students in the university who are turned into socialist converts, who can no longer distinguish between good and evil. After reading the superb article by Bawer, I wondered if it was truly peace these so called gatekeepers of justice valued, or rather a dismantling of spiritual and economic liberty, democracy, private property, and the rule of law.
There is a profound moral difference between the use of force for conquest, and the use of force for liberation. The author easily notes how this distinction is not made among many in the “peace studies” arena. And that is fundamentally why this author can write so clearly about the dangers of those who believe America’s so called capitalist system is the cause for so much oppression and blood shed in the world.
