If you want for peace, work for bombs...

My drive to work or to the gym takes me past a 2 block area of shops near my college that just screams "lefty yuppie". It includes a hip independent coffee shop, a bakery, a high-end audio equiptment store, and a shoe store that repairs Birkenstocks. (It also has a Chinese resturant with the somewhat racially distasteful name "Chow Mein Charlie's", but that's a different story). The spots in front of the stores are always filled with the cars lefties love - Subarus, Volvos, Priuses (is that the plural of Prius?) and the like, usually sporting the usual left-leaning bumper stickers.

Today I passed a Civic that bore the ever popular "If you want peace, work for justice" bumper stickers. It's one of those warm, fuzzy statements that people like to use. And it's got a certain anti-capitalist and anti-war slant to it, as well as a "root-cause", "why do they hate us" kind of vibe.

But when you think about it, a whole lot of peace has been acheived not by working for justice, but by the use of violence. Take World War II. It wasn't working for justice that brought peace and an end to World War II. In Europe, it was a whole bunch of soldiers landing on the beach. In Japan, it was two big honkin' nuclear weapons. The Jews and other "undesirables" who were rescued by us winning World War II were not rescued because of some social activist working for justice - they were rescued by military force.

And if you want to go back in time to another injustice, it was violence that ended slavery in this country. (Yes, we can debate until the cows come home over the causes of the Civil War and if it was over slavery, but slavery did end because of the Civil War). Slavery was, of course, unjust. And justice was achieved - but it was achieved through the sword (well, OK, the musket), not through the pen or the bumper sticker.

I'm not saying that violence is always the answer. But sometimes it is, and many people don't really give it the credit it deserves. I don't doubt that if you are a woman in Afgainistan or a Saddam opponent in Iraq, that you are experiencing peace and justice right now - justice that was achieved through violence.

Of course, I could be reading too much into what is just another sappy bumper sticker. But that's why I don't put political bumper stickers on my car.