A Rare Moment

Marathon, Florida
24 42.40 081 N 05.68 W

How often in your life does something happen to change your world view, and perhaps change your politics forever? If it never happens to you, you are like Archie Bunker. If it happens too often you're the meathead. If you're a thinking person, it happens but rarely.

I had such a rare event this week. It came as I listened to a segment of NPR's Talk of the Nation on the radio. That is an excellent program. This segment was called, War And Violence On The Decline In Modern Times.  Read the transcript, or listen to the 30 minute podcast here.

The subject was: 

Despite news of terrorist bombings, U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and crackdowns in Syria, two recent books argue the world has never seen so little war and violence. Steven Pinker, author of The Better Angels of Our Nature, and Joshua Goldstein, author of Winning the War on War, discuss.

What changed for me?  I've always believed that the UN is a corrupt and useless organization, and that UN peacekeeping was ineffective and worse than useless posturing (think of Srebrenica).  The program segment made me change my mind on both.  Try listening to it or reading it; it's a remarkable segment.  Trust me, it is likely to change your world view in some ways also.