Just for a change: Messages to live by

Let Us Beat Swords Into Plowshares statue at the United Nations Headquarters, New York City.Photograph credit: Rodsan18. In the public domain.

by Kathie MM

As currently envisioned, the U.S. Peace Memorial  will consist of twelve walls, or facets, containing engraved peace quotes from famous Americans (including, for example, Noam Chomsky, Martin Luther King Jr., Jeanette Rankin, Margaret Mead, Albert Einstein) as well as lesser-known figures.

Today, for your continuing inspiration, we share some of the quotations under consideration. Embrace them.

“We must devise a system in which Peace is more rewarding than War.”

Margaret Mead (1901-1978).

 

 

“I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.”

Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969).

 

“It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968).

 

The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882).

 

“Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought.”

Helen Keller (1880-1968).

 

No, I am not going 10,000 miles to help murder kill and burn other people to simply help continue the domination of white slavemasters over dark people …

Muhammad Ali (1942-2016).

 

“[t]here was never a good War, or a bad Peace.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790).

 

“I believe that the killing of human beings in a war is no better than common murder.”

Albert Einstein (1879-1955).

 

“I am an anti-imperialist.  I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.”

Mark Twain, pseudonym for Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910).

 

“We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.”

Jimmy Carter (1924-  ).

 

“I’m fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.”

George S. McGovern (1922-2012).

 

“How can you make a war on terror, if war itself is terrorism?”

Howard Zinn (1922-2010).

 

“… all war is a symptom of man’s failure as a thinking animal, …”

John Steinbeck (1902-1968).

 

“… he who is the author of a war, lets loose the whole contagion of hell, and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death.”

Thomas Paine (1737-1809).

Who are the real patriots?

How about Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and John Penn, who were among the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence?

Liberty Bell
Liberty Bell. Photo by Serguey, used under CC Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

What did these patriots say about the ethical principles and human rights that underlay the formation of a new nation?

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.“

For a true patriot, a true conservative, these words provide a mantra or creed to live by. They are an ethical commitment echoed in the final phrase of the Pledge of Allegiance that all Americans are expected to know and honor: “with liberty and justice for all.”

Our early patriots would be ashamed of the hypocrisy of generations of Americans who call themselves conservatives and/or patriots but who have trampled on the rights of others while promoting their own agendas.

Why do I raise these issues now? Because it is almost July 4, the day we celebrate the endorsement by those early patriots of the Declaration of Independence.

We the people of the United States have a great deal of work to do if we are going to honor the task that our forefathers and foremothers set forth: liberty and justice for all.

Our armed forces fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other parts of the world were not sent there by our leaders for patriotic reasons.

Killing and maiming men, women, and children may appear to those leaders to strengthen the position of the U.S. government in the Middle East and elsewhere; however, such acts of war are more likely to endanger than to ensure the life, liberty, and happiness not only of victims of American aggression but also of Americans themselves.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology