LETTERS.

Renner's Utopia

To Michael Renner's utopian article "How to Abolish War" (July/August 1999) I can only say, "Yes, and pigs may fly--but since they won't, we'll have war!" Sorry, but I'm eighty years old, was all through five years of World War II in the Canadian Air Force, and have heard all the rhetoric before.

My recommendation would be to start at home by trying to bring to heel the carefully nurtured warmongering mentality of the United States of America, which is far and away the most militaristic, aggressive nation since Nazi Germany. It will be a very difficult, almost impossible task in itself, but perhaps from what we may learn by trying, we can then take a crack at Renner's utopia. Good luck--I won't be around to see the result!

Eric T. Pengelley Davis, CA

Michael Renner outlines a masterful dissertation on the many approaches to controlling warmaking and thereby gradually reducing its impact on the peoples of the Earth. He goes into much reasonable detail on the methods of arms control. He shows the error of assuming that war is an inevitable product of humanity and lists the three principles that need to be addressed: disarmament, universal constraints on arms, and war prevention.

In the last of these three, he unfortunately misses even mentioning probably the most important cause: religion and religious differences. It is hard to review the wars in history without bumping into this as at least a partial cause and, in a vast number of cases, the only underlying impetus for peoples to go at each other's throats.

The most recent, Kosovo, is a conflict between Islam and the Orthodox Christian church. Probably the oldest extant conflict is the low-grade war that has been going on since the beginning of the century: the conflict between the Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. Then we have the Jews and the Muslims going at each other in the Middle East. We have all heard of the religious war that has been dubbed the "Hundred Years War." Probably the worst blot on Western civilization was the Children's Crusade wherein an army of children marched across Europe to "kill the infidel."

It is time for our religious leaders to do something about this ongoing problem that they keep fomenting. In the case of an impending conflict, the leaders of the nations involved try with varying degrees of success to avoid bloodshed. Why don't the heads of the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches put their heads together and try their hand at solving the Irish dilemma? Their influence is certainly strong. The heads of the Muslim and Jewish religions should be in the forefront in bringing peace to the Middle East. In the Balkans, the leaders of Islam and Christianity are never heard from. They are at the root of this problem, understand it best, and should stir themselves to heal the differences that cause so much suffering.

All religions preach peace, love, and respect for humankind. It is time they did something worthwhile about it.

Al Coda Woodcliff Lake, NJ

Supply then Demand

With respect to "ending war in the twenty-first century," it seems to me that war is as natural as two bighorn sheep butting heads. As John Swomley says in his article, "Kosovo: Could It Have Been Avoided?" (July/August 1999), "The United States has rejected the UN as a peacekeeping force ... and has instead relied on NATO."

Capitalism can survive only by producing military supplies; ergo NATO is an essential market for war materials. Try this proposition: capitalism is in a straitjacket of the "free market." Capitalism produces refrigerators, autos, computers, and the like. Fine. Consumers consider what to buy. Do I need a refrigerator or new auto? Well, not necessarily. The consumer has free choice what to buy and what not to buy. Well, it turns out that you can't produce refrigerators at the cut prices and pay factory workers even one hundredth of the chief executive officer's pay. Same with autos and the rest. Free-market block.

The economy grinds to a halt? Not at all! There is a product not subject to the free market. Your congressional representative sells you a military tank, aircraft, missile, submarine, military uniform, gas mask--whatever Do you have a consumer's choice? Not at all. Congress understands the problem and (wisely?) regularly appropriates more military production than even the Pentagon asks for. We have been known to sell military supplies to a foreign nation and subsequently wage war (more military supplies) with that nation--for instance, Iraq. After the Kosovo war, look at the helicopters, bombs, missiles, and the rest that "have to be replaced" if we are to be able to suppress socialism in Vietnam, Nicaragua, or any place on the orb.

Frank Skiles Anaconda, MT

Restore the Pledge

Lawrence Hyman claims in his article "Does American Democracy Need God" (July/August 1999) that "the majority of Americans want to keep the phrase under God in the Pledge of Allegiance." But where is his evidence for this assertion? As author of the Pledge Restoration website (users.deltanet.com/~tango/pledge) I hear almost daily from Americans--not all of them atheist or even humanist--who prefer the original pledge.

Since Jesus asserted that "the Kingdom of God is within you" (not "above you") and since the phrase under God appears nowhere in the Bible, there are many Christians who would prefer the government not advance a hierarchical scheme as the preferred relationship for its citizens to God. Such Christians feel that God is with them, not above on some distant cloud as the corrupted pledge implies. Pantheists (and there are more Americans than Hyman may care to acknowledge who think, with Spinoza, that God is simply the universe) locate themselves within rather than under God; for a pantheist, the government's phrase is a clear violation of theological tenets and rights.

Before Hyman assumes that a religious edict appended to the pledge in 1954 at the height of anti-communist hysteria has the status of eternal dicta, he should talk to his neighbors. They are more receptive to the original pledge, which excluded none of any faith, than conventional wisdom would lead us to believe. The American people understand why government should not promote specific religious theologies. When they are properly shown that under God is a specific theology (and perhaps not even their own), Americans will indeed respond to a call for restoration of our true and original pledge.

Lance Jencks Costa Mesa, CA

The Lesson of Columbine 

Barbara Dority's article "The Columbine Tragedy: Countering the Hysteria" (July/August 1999) didn't have to end by saying, "We don't know why the murderers did what they did. We don't know why other incidents of school violence have occurred.... Nor do we know how to prevent future incidents." The most likely explanation is stated in her second paragraph: "The Trench Coat Mafia had been a target of derision for at least four years. Members were picked on, harassed, and excluded--`always on the outside looking in.'"

The reports on these school shootings have generally said that the shooters were outcasts, which reflects the fact that our schools are social battlefields where the "winners" stay winners only by bullying, teasing, demeaning, and humiliating the "losers" relentlessly. Those very, very few losers who lack supportive relationships can be injured to the point that they become dehumanized, hardened, alienated outcasts who have been taught that life is cheap and that they have no place or future in the community. From there, it's just a matter of deciding whether to kill their tormentors, themselves, or both.

It's time for society's adults to realize that we must end these abuses and make schoolchildren treat each other like civilized human beings--an expectation that should be a natural part of the humanist philosophy.

Leland M. Helms Rochester Hills, MI