The
Rational Argumentator
The Nobel War-is-Peace Prize
The Nobel committee has been widely and rightly ridiculed for that
choice since the American president has yet to do anything to make the
world a more peaceful place. They gave Obama the prize for making
apology speeches that activated the adrenal and other glands (but not
the brain) of Europeans who oppose most of the good things for which
That’s true,
but also too easy. Let’s look deeper at what moral principles ought to
govern war and peace and, more specifically, the role of force in human
affairs. This will allow us to judge both the Nobel committee and Obama.
Peaceful society
Let’s start with the
purpose of government. America’s Founders said it best in the
Declaration of Independence when they stated that we are endowed with
“certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and
the Pursuit of Happiness,” which were understood to include the right
to private property. Thus, “to secure these Rights, Governments are
instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of
the Governed.”
This bold statement
flies in the face of the implications of the Nobel committee’s applause
for Obama’s diplomacy “founded in the concept that those who are to
lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes shared
by the majority of the world’s population.”
Rather, because we
are each ends in ourselves, if we are to pursue our own survival and
well-being in society with others, we must be free to act as we see fit
while leaving others free to do the same. This means that we must deal
with one another based on mutual consent rather than through the
initiation of force or fraud.
This understanding
also implies that police are justified in using force to stop or
apprehend criminals who are violating the rights of citizens. Further,
governments can be justified in using military force to stop credible
threats to the liberty and security of its citizens or to retaliate
against those who use force against those citizens.
In other words,
governments should be rights-protectors, trying to preserve, possibly
by the use of retaliatory force, the liberty of citizens to peaceably
deal with one another.
Obama’s War on Americans
So how does Obama measure up on this standard of peace?
Obama stands clearly
against peace on the domestic front. He does not use government to
defend the liberty and property of citizens against force but, rather,
uses force to limit liberty and take property. His administration is
attempting to put the federal government in control of the country’s
health care services. He’s attempting to put draconian controls on
business and industry, that is, on all workers and consumers, in the
name of “climate control.” He already has taken over banks and car
companies. And he’s destroying the value of the currency we hold in our
bank accounts and pockets with huge government deficits as he transfers
hundreds of billions of dollars from those who earned it to those who
haven’t.
And all of these efforts rest on the use of government force to restrict the liberty of individuals.
While he didn’t
originate statist policies—Republicans and Democrats both practice
them—Obama is acting aggressively to take those policies to their
logical conclusion: government control of virtually all aspects of our
lives. Obama is at war with the American people. He would, of course,
prefer that individuals quietly surrender their liberty and submit to
the peace of a prison.
No peace without freedom
Internationally, Obama is no better.
He wants the elites
of the industrialized countries to work together to break down national
sovereignty, not in order to better protect the liberty of Americans
but, rather, in order exercise greater control over the lives of the
people of all nations. He seeks greater international coordination of
economic policy. He wants greater authority for international
organizations. And, with his fellow statists, he is acting aggressively
against countries like
In the morally-warped world of Obama, war is peace because, to complete the Orwellian analogy, freedom is slavery.
On traditional
war-and-peace matters, Obama’s apology offensive has not helped secure
Americans from the threat of Islamists. But it has impressed the Nobel
committee members who, in the award announcement, stated that “Dialogue
and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the
most difficult international conflicts.” Damned good thing for them
that the
Dr. Edward Hudgins directs advocacy and is a senior scholar at The Atlas Society, the center for Objectivism.
For further reading:
*Ayn Rand, “The Roots of War,” in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, 1967.
*Edward Hudgins, “Rejecting the Fetish of United Nations Consensus.” March 20, 2003.
*William R Thomas, “Weighing War.” Navigator, April 2003.
Copyright, The Atlas Society. For more information, please visit www.atlassociety.org.
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