Yesterday was Veterans Day. The November 11th date was chosen because the Armistice ending World War I "went into effect on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" of 1918.
That was "the war to end all wars."
Except that it didn't, of course. Wars to "end wars" are rather self-contradictory. We have fought a lot of wars to "end wars," and to "bring peace," and we all know that this "wage war to bring peace" formula is just not efficacious.
Let's try Pete Seeger's remedy. He thought that "singing for peace," as opposed to "killing for peace" was the right approach.
This is also the approach taken by the Raging Grannies, a Santa Cruz institution. They are pictured above, singing at the Santa Cruz Town Clock.
I just happened to be reading about the Raging Grannies yesterday, on Veterans Day. If you'd like to see the lyrics to a couple of their songs, you can click right here.
The Raging Grannies have the idea that the best way to honor veterans is to create fewer of them!
http://www.grannyjansantacruzblog.com/?page_id=53#comment-10
Way back during the Vietnam War, when those of us who opposed it were labeled "unpatriotic" or worse by so much of the media and others, someone started a phony story about "hippies" spitting on returning veterans, and it took off like wildfire among right-wing activists. Pretty soon, an amazing number of folks "remembered" friends who had told them of such incidents.
ReplyDeleteThat was when I came up with this line:
Saying that pacifists don’t support our troops is like saying that vegetarians don’t support our cows.
I was pretty proud of it at the time, but, unfortunately, it never caught on.
I'm with the cows (and the veterans). While I lived in those times, too, I had never heard this one. Thanks, John!
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