Theos-Talk Archives (June 1997 Message tl00287)

On Sat, 14 Jun 1997, Tom Robertson wrote:

>
> On Sat, 14 Jun 1997 12:55:12 -0400 (EDT) JRC <jrcecon@selway.umt.edu>
> writes:
>
> >	I'm sorry but this whole discussion seems slightly bizarre
> >when I step back from it - to follow a chain of logic that concludes
> that
> >when a nation is finally armed to the teeth ... and almost every citizen
> >has a weapon - is actually some mark of *spiritual stature*, some >ideal
> that is a *good*, something to strive for .... well, I guess we've >just
> thrown out Christ, and Buddha, and Gandhi, and the Dali Lama, >and in
> fact the whole tenor of most of the greatest teachers our race >has ever
> known.
>
> That's because you have made the mistake, which is typical of the liberal
> approach, of believing that the problem is that good people might
> initiate the use of weapons, when the problem is how good people should
> react to bad people initiating the use of weapons.
>
Or perhaps you are making the typical conservative mistake of believing
the writings of those masters ought to be followed only to the degree it
is convenient. They were all pretty clear about what they thought the
response of good people should be - no, not just pretty clear, but
actually adament. And the response was not weaponry.
							-JRC