I don’t usually insert anything even vaguely political in this blog, though I have plenty of comments in my newsnet email list that I send around to long-suffering friends. But President Obama’s speech to the Nobel Peace Prize committee transcends politics and statecraft, and makes points that too many people prefer to forget.
Peace, after all, is not merely the absence of war, and it doesn’t come about merely by people wishing for it. Peace is necessarily borne on the back of soldiers, for otherwise it would be at the mercy of the first person taking control of a country and insisting on it being either his (or her) way or else. One would think that Hitler and Stalin would have taught the world that lesson, or good old revered Comrade Chairman Mao, who taught that “power comes from the barrel of a gun.” But it’s hard for some people to give up their dreams of living in a perfect world among perfect people.