The Peace Movement

Due to scheduling conflicts I was unable to investigate the peace movement this last weekend here in Tallahassee. However as well all know there were massive demonstrations in Washington D.C., San Francisco and many other places around the world.

David Horowitz took a moment this week to give his view of the situation. Horowitz was, once upon a time, a far left liberal. And now he's a pretty staunch conservative who runs a website which focuses, last time I looked at it, on black racial violence against whites. He's pretty dull most of the time, unless he's being attacked. Then he really gets interested and engaged and writes a lot better.

Well his take on the peace movement is interesting. "During the Cold War, the radical "peace" movement bullied right-thinking Americans into silence. Our government lost the ability to stay the course in the anti-Communist war. The result was the Communist slaughter of two-and-a-half million peasants in Indo-China after the divisions at home forced America to leave.

"Once again, the hate America left is attempting to silence right-thinking citizens. It is attempting to divide the home front in the face of the enemy. Even as we go to war. It is stabbing our young men and women in the back even as they step into harm's way to defend us."

The standard canard from the right. The only reason we lost in Vietnam was because of the peace movement. If people had supported the war wholeheartedly and not been swayed by evil protesters, we would have won. Of course this ignores the very real concerns about China possibly getting into the war. It also assumes that the United States could have convinced the Vietnamese people to support an out of touch elitist dictator. It also assumes that if it had not been for the protesters the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon administrations would have prosecuted the war to its fullest. It assumes a lot of things. But it's a pleasant fiction for the right, so let it go.

But let me ask you this question; how is the peace movement attempting to silence right thinking citizens (a phrase so poisonous I could spend an hour on it)? Do supporters of the war run the risk of losing their jobs? Of being thrown in jail? Of being publicly ridiculed? No. The most you can say is that they might have to occasionally deal with someone who disagrees with them. That's part of life. And perhaps David Horowitz still has a little growing up to do.