war and peace
Imagining a Different Type of Peace Organization
by John Whitehead Effective peace activism is urgently needed in the United States today. (Peace activism is also needed elsewhere in the world, but since I’m an American citizen, I will focus here on the United States.) Tensions between the United States on the one hand and nations such as Russia, China, North Korea,…
Displaced and Brought Together by War: The Tale of Giovanni’s Island
by John Whitehead The many ways war and its aftermath can devastate people’s lives, but also the bonds that can form among those enduring such hardships, is the subject of Giovanni’s Island, an animated movie produced by Japanese studio Production I.G. Although originally released in 2014, the movie became available in North America for…
Promoting Peace at Home and Abroad: A Challenge for Peace Activists
by John Whitehead Among the many challenges facing peace activists is how widely to spread their peacemaking efforts. Should they devote their energies to opposing wars and other hawkish policies pursued by their own countries? Or should they work against hawkish policies pursued by all countries, everywhere? Each approach has its advantages and disadvantages and,…
Culture of Conscience: Would You Pay Taxes that Fund Abortions if Hyde and Helms were Repealed?
by Thad Crouch (see at the bottom for a link of a video of the author speaking the same content) Taxes for Violence This month, several pro-choice congressional representatives introduced the Equal Access to Abortion Coverage bill to repeal the Hyde Amendment and allow federal funding for domestic abortion violence for any reason to any…
A Healing Metaphor: Pandemic as War
by Julia Smucker The language is everywhere: we’re at war against an invisible enemy, adjusting to new realities of wartime living and expressing gratitude to the brave men and women fighting on the front lines to keep us safe. Except that the front in this war is in hospitals and labs, and the front-line fighters…
Win-Lose is a Mirage
by Bill Samuel, Consistent Life Network Board member As I was taking a morning nature walk, I was thinking of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s insight in Braiding Sweetgrass of people loving the land and the land loving us back. The reciprocity is vital regardless of whether you are comfortable with using the emotional term “love” to…
What Does It Mean to Be Inconsistent?
by Julia Smucker CLN President John Whitehead recently put a question to fellow consistent-lifers: does it necessarily make sense to call people “inconsistent” for not fully adhering to the consistent life ethic (CLE)? After all, the reasons people give for approving of some forms of killing and disapproving of others often follow their own…
“Somewhere Else When the Trigger Is Pulled”: Orwell and War
by John Whitehead This is a follow-up to our post Recognizing Humanity: Orwell and the Consistent Life Ethic, in which John stated that Orwell’s position on war needed to be treated separately. This year is the 70th anniversary of Orwell’s most famous book, 1984. Political language — and with variations this is true of…
Does Socially-Approved Killing Increase Criminal Homicide?
by Rachel MacNair When killing is socially approved, does this provide a model for killing that isn’t? We offer evidence. The Homicide Rate and Executions Do executions deter murder? Since societies with executions still have murders, we know it’s not a complete deterrent. But are there fewer murders than there would be otherwise? There’s another…
Human Rights & the Right to Life: Reconsidering Conventional Human Rights Activism
by John Whitehead Respecting people’s human rights should go hand in hand with upholding the consistent life ethic. The concept of “human rights” broadly means those conditions that people can legitimately claim as necessary to living a decent human life. Life itself is one of these conditions, and many human rights documents recognize a right…