(Published in Letters section of AV Press May 16, 2014, their headline)
When I
was a teenager in Pasadena, guys I knew were coming home from the war in
Vietnam really messed up. One friend told me in a narcotic haze that he had
watched his buddies die at a battle for Michelin Plantation.
I said,
what? You were at war for a rubber corporation? He nodded, yeah that's about what it
was.
For me,
that was a political turning point, and soon I was going with my older sister
to Peace and Freedom Party meetings, where I signed my name at the door.
Does
that mean 50 years later, if I'm not a radical left-winger, I'm a turncoat? No,
I just grew up and saw how the world really works.
One
thing I learned is that the biggest pacifists in America are in the military,
because they are the ones who actually have to fight when we go to war.
However, as much as we would love to not even need a military or weapons, the
reality is there are forces who would like to destroy us, and we have to be
prepared.
So I
gave up my teenage naivete and developed a passion for real solutions to real
problems, with no political theory attached. I learned that a person whose
politics are a little different from mine is not an enemy; he's someone to
learn from.
Kay
Ebeling
Lancaster.
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