Reply #89: Where You Get The Idea, Mr. Dreissig

[The Magistrate]

That "anti-war" is a core Democratic value is beyond me. Wilson entered the Great War, President Roosevelt fought World War Two, President Truman opposed the Soviets in the Cold War, President Johnson was most certainly a Democrat, President Carter innaugurated the supply of weaponry to Afghans to oppose the Soviet occupation, and President Clinton sent U.S. forces to war, under the command of Gen. Clark, in Kossovo.

To be "anti-war" is not even, Sir, a core value of leftism. The core value of leftism is that workers should get the full extent of the value their labor produces. In the pursuit of this, the left has always been willing to pick up the stick and the gun and the bomb, and to decry the preacher's advice to turn the other cheek. Pacifism has no purpose on the left save the tactical: Lenin called for peace as a means to secure revolution; Mao called for national resistance to Imperial Japan as a means to secure revolution. The circumstances were different, hence so was the slogan cried.

It may be among your personal core values, Sir, to oppose war, but that is a different question. It is among my personal core values to oppose organized religion, but you will not find me denouncing a candidate who does not do the same in loud tones, and may even see me support one who makes great play of piety, if that seems best in the overall circumstance of an election. The fact is that opposition to war is not very widely shared among the people: most people see it as a thing that is at times necessary, and regard as hopelessly naive anyone who habitually denounces it. After all, the most important sigil of a sovereign government is a monoploly on the legitimate use of violence, and so long as this remains true, the people will never entrust state power to any whom they feel incompetent at violence, or unwilling to use it at need.