Bud Talkinghorn: P. J. O'Rourke makes funny again -- "Weaponization" and "universal bureaucrats"

In his book, Peace Kills, P. J. O'Rourke again skewers the foilbles of the left. He picks apart the declaration of a bunch of Nobel Prize winners that has the hallmark of all left-wing thinking. The answer according to them for world peace is always "multilateral action" against the tears of the world, with a large dollop of wealth levelling. This tribunal would have to consist of the world's major Marxist/socialist luminaries of course. It would by necessity have to be composed of members of numerous failed states, who have bludgeoned their own people into total submission. But, using the rhetoric of the 'dispossessed' and that favourite phrase 'the traumatized ex-colonials', they would gain the moral highground. The oppressors do have a role. As a first downpayment they get to bankroll the whole shebang. They have been doing this for decades in the UN, so they are used to it.

O'Rourke zeroes in on some of the key words that the laureates employ. "Weaponization" is one. That is a bad thing. After all, how could the Rwandans or the Sierra Leonians massacre each other if the West hadn't given them the weapons? If memory serves me right, they did it very effectively with weapons like machetes that pre-dated modern weaponry. The kiddies of the hacked-off limbs didn't have it done by rocket launchers. When the barbarians get their blood up, a make-shift club will do the trick nicely. Then there is the unspoken fact that Nobel, the author of their awards, make his money off dynamite. Considering the future applications of that invention, the question of 'weaponization' takes on an entirely different meaning.

O'Rourke also takes issue with the Laureates' demand for "the rule of law". They supposedly do not mean the apartheid laws of South Africa, the Jim Crow law of America, the Cultural Revolution laws of Mao, the 'Year Zero" laws of Pol pot's Cambodia, the Nuremberg laws of the Nazis, the 'subversive laws' used during Argentina's Dirty War, or Canada's gun registry laws. Scratch that last one, as that is exactly the kind of law they would espouse. Rather, they would like to have laws that regulate everything they disapprove of deeply. That the majority doesn't want these laws makes no differnce, because these elites know better what is good for you. So what if Stalin's laws to collectivize food production meant the deaths of millions by Siberian deportation or mass starvation, in the end it was a good thing for progress. No pain, no gain, as the commissars used to say.

O'Rourke sees these universal bureaucrats for what they would become; unaccountable, ideologically-driven judges. We already have that in Canada with the Supreme Court; we don't need a global version of it.

© Bud Talkinghorn--O'Rourke is much wittier than I have made his arguments out to be. Read the book.