by Henry Lamb
December 27, 2004
all people everywhere share a common hope for peace on earth. This common hope begins to unravel when people discuss how to achieve peace on earth.
The Taliban believe peace can be achieved only when the rest of the world submits to their dictates. Communists believe peace can be achieved only when the rest of the world submits to centralized government planning and control. Far too much of the world believes that peace cannot be achieved until Israel is erased from the earth.
The United Nations was constructed with the expectation that member nations would surrender their military resources to a single global, U.N. army, leaving individual nations powerless to attack their neighbors. The U.N. was seen to be the mechanism that could finally, impose and enforce peace on earth.
Superior military force may be able to stop hostilities — for a time — but it cannot instill peace on earth.
The common thread that runs through all of history's shattered hope for peace on earth is the determination by one party to dictate how others should live.
Every human, from time to time, may wish that others would behave differently. No human, however, has the right to dictate how another should behave. Conflict is always the consequence of forced behavior modification, whether it is attempted between two individuals, or among nations.
Peace is the result of mutual respect, through which the inherent rights of all people are honored.
The world is a long way from peace. The world is a long way from even agreeing that people have inherent rights — or what those rights might be. United Nations' literature is replete with laundry lists of "rights" to which they claim all people are entitled — the right to housing; the right to food and water; the right to medical care; the right to clean air; the right to a job ... and so on.
None of these are inherent rights. Conflict arises because the people who claim these rights feel the United Nations should force others to modify their behavior in order to supply the rights they claim. The Taliban, and other religious extremists, apparently believe that the only rights people have are those granted by the current imam.
There can never be universal respect for so-called "rights" manufactured by humans that include the right to kill innocent civilians, or the right to force some people to provide housing and food to others.
There can, and should be, universal respect for inherent rights which all people share: the right to life, the right to procreate, and the right to survive. These rights are gifts from the Inventor of life. No human, nor any government, can bestow these gifts — they can only take them away.
Peace on earth begins when each person who claims these rights recognizes they come with the inherent responsibility to respect the same rights inherent to every other living person.
While we may wish those around us would modify their behavior, we have no right to force them to do so — unless their behavior threatens to extinguish our own. Humans have also been given the ability to reason and to communicate. Herein lies the means to navigate the minefield that separates the rights of one person from another.
Nations, too, may wish that other nations would modify their behavior. Reason and communication is the means to navigate the minefield that separates the rights of one nation from another. Nations, however, have no inherent rights. The only rights a nation may have are those granted by the people — or taken from the people by the government.
Very few of the 192 "united nations" on earth recognize, or respect, the inherent rights of their own people, and certainly have no respect for the rights of people in other nations. That's why suicide bombers can blow up a bus full of women and children in Tel aviv, or innocent civilians in a Baghdad market.
as the collective voice and spirit of the people of america, the United States government should abandon its efforts to achieve peace on earth through the United Nations. Instead, the United States should extend an invitation to men of goodwill everywhere who will engage in systematic communications in search of reasonable ways to voluntarily respect and honor the inherent rights of all people — which is the only route to peace on earth.