There is hardly a spot on the planet that has not been moistened with blood shed in combat or massacre. Yet, in our enlightened times, there are people who believe in their enlightenedness that violence is a bad thing. Some of them even believe that just allowing their children to watch a violent movie or TV show will be a sin against the universe. I have news for them: there is no peace without conflict. Even non-violence is a form of resistance to reality.

There are those who believe that the death penalty is a form of violence. I believe a moratorium on executions is a form of violence also. Sometimes it is more violent to be inactive, unaffected, and uninvolved. Apathy is a form of violence. So is vigourous stupidity.

The world we live in is not one inch better than it was an hundred years ago. People are still dying of famine, genocide, calculated oppression, poor medical care, despotism, cultural ignorance, and religious stupidity.
Governments are still thinking locally, not globally, while merchants are still thinking globally, not locally. When merchants take over the governments or the governments take over the merchants, then everything gets a bit weird. Soldiers, sailors and marines are still wandering out into battle on the orders of those whose only battle has been whether to get out of bed for breakfast or not.

War has changed in that we do not fight to conquer as often as we used to. Now there is something called "freedom" that seems to be the thing we are trying to take from one group and give to another while sacrificing the same thing ourselves in order to deny it to someone else who wants it but doesn't want us to have it. "Freedom" is actually a dirty and violent word to many stupid men who have power or wish to steal it in this world. They don't want their neighbor to have it, they don't want their daughter to have it, they don't want anyone who doesn't agree with them to have it. In fact, they are not sure they want any. So they let their god or their analyst make their decisions for them.

Friends, Welshmen, countrymen, let me tell you something. You don't get to sit on your bums and whine about peace and love and wheat germ without thinking about how much blood was flung to keep the property you are living on within the boundaries of people who speak the same language you do. Write this on the inside of your eyelids: Not a single nation on this planet has become a nation without someone being denied the right to live there. Either by death or banishment or just simply having your language and your customs made illegal, if you were born in the right time and the right place, you would be a bad person to the people in power or the populace that wanted to live where you were and wanted you to move on.

It's not all politics. Sometimes it's greed without the elections. Sometimes it is racism and cultural discrimination without the greed. Sometimes it is just time to fight for something because there is nothing good on TV and Sascha Baron Cohen has just made fun of your favorite yak.

Humans are violent. Every single one of them has the potential for fight or flight. It is just that as a group, they can't agree on what to fight for or what to run from. Sometimes they are fighting for the right to run away from agreement.

Let me ask you a few questions. What is more important, keeping your wee bairns from watching Terminator 2 on the tube or keeping a baby in the Sudan from starving to death? What is more important, keeping your local teenagers from buying steak knives on ebay or stopping the practice of female and male genital mutilation throughout the world? What is more important, keeping anyone of any age from smoking themselves into an early grave or stopping mean people from bayoneting babies and cutting off the trigger fingers of teenage boys? What is more important, making sure your virginal children do not hear, see or read about pornography or making sure that madmen with AIDS do not rape virgins, even infants, in the mistaken hope that they can cure themselves?

Violence occurs in the schools, churches, courts, and legislatures when the truth about our origins and natures are obscured by sophistry, soft soap, and just out-right charlatanry. Both evolution and creation are violent. Just take a couple months and read the entire Bible. Swords and slings and stones are everywhere. People are torn to bits, entire villages and nations are slaughtered. Evolution involves a whole bunch of animals, birds, and amphibians being EATEN. Some are even swallowed alive. Try experiencing that sometime and see if you feel like calling your solicitor or grabbing a big rock.

Peace is not a reason unto itself. There has to be a purpose for Peace. If you think the cause of Peace is enough of an excuse to try to get people to deny their natures, then you induce war in their psyches. Both evolution and creation strongly suggest that peace is only the interval while both sides reload.

We are always at war with our consciences, except for those who have none.