Unilateral Disarmament

I generally like Ron Paul's stand on National Defense, but Dennis Kucinich took a Stronger Stand on U.S. Nuclear Disarmament. This is important, but it's not enough.

90% of Americans claim to be Christian (at least in some vague sense). Most of these people believe that libertarianism is "impractical" and "unrealistic," and that we will always need a big strong central government to prevent society from collapsing into "anarchy" -- a doctrine America's Founding Fathers strongly rejected.

In the same way, most Americans believe that peace is "impractical" and "unrealistic," and that we will always need a government possessed of a vast storehouse of nuclear weapons of mass destruction, in order to prevent nuclear destruction(!).

Statism is a Christian heresy. Before America can become libertarian, Christians must become libertarians. Kucinich will never convince most Christian-leaning Americans to disarm. And whoever does will use more than a few sound-bites and bumper-stickers to accomplish the task. The lengthy journey begins with the recognition of two premises:

1. Nukes are sinful
2. "In God We [Must] Trust"

For over a thousand years, Christians have judged whether a war is just or not on the basis of something called "Just War Theory." One of the criteria of a "just war" is often phrased this way:

The war is waged with the proper discrimination between combatants and non-combatants.

Every sensible assessment of nuclear weapons -- but especially a Christian assessment -- would conclude that a weapon which can kill hundreds of thousands of people with one mighty blast cannot possibly discriminate between combatants and non-combatants. Untold numbers of women, children, grandparents, and all forms of innocent life will be killed by a large nuclear bomb.

Such a weapon should never be used. Such a weapon should not even be manufactured in the first place. Those who are a part of the "military-industrial complex" and work to make or to deploy weapons of mass murder will be held accountable as accomplices to mass murder. We can sing "God Bless America" all day long, but God will not bless America as long as she threatens the innocent of the world with nuclear weapons. All such weapons should be destroyed. We should begin with our own.

This is called "unilateral disarmament."

Many will criticize this proposal as "naive" and "unrealistic."

Destroying our nuclear weapons would invite invasion and destruction at the hands of our enemies, they say.

Never mind that these "enemies" have been propped up with foreign aid from the federal government.

It all boils down to this: Do you really believe in God and in the Declaration of Independence? Or was America built on a delusion, a superstition, a fairy tale? If there is no God, then obviously our nation's motto, "In God We Trust," is a lie, and it would be hypocritical to suggest that we could have "a firm reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence." There are no "self-evident" truths -- or any "truth" at all -- and we have not been endowed with unalienable rights by our Creator. There are no "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God," and we have no obligation to love our neighbor. As existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre concluded, God is dead; my neighbor is the devil.

Atheism is a recipe for mass-murder and global destruction.

And the LORD said to Samuel, “Heed the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me, that I should not reign over them.
1 Sam 8:7 compare Thomas Paine

National Security comes from God, not from nukes. In a very real way, the lives of billions of human beings depend on Christians in America returning to "the Faith of our Fathers," serving the "Prince of Peace," and moving forward in terms of that premise.

14 “Now therefore, fear the LORD, serve Him in sincerity and in truth, and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the River and in Egypt. Serve the LORD! 15 And if it seems evil to you to serve the LORD, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.”
16 So the people answered and said: “Far be it from us that we should forsake the LORD to serve other gods;
Joshua 24:14-16

Additional resources:

• Mutual Assured Destruction
• Weapons of Mass Destruction
• The Cult of the Omnipotent State
• Defense