Observe the nature of today’s alleged peace movements. Professing love and
concern for the survival of mankind, they keep screaming that the
nuclear-weapons race should be stopped, that armed force should be abolished as
a means of settling disputes among nations, and that war should be outlawed in
the name of humanity. Yet these same peace movements do not oppose
dictatorships; the political views of their members range through all shades of
the statist spectrum, from welfare statism to socialism to fascism to
communism. This means that they are opposed to the use of coercion by one
nation against another, but not by the government of a nation against its own
citizens; it means that they are opposed to the use of force against armed
adversaries, but not against the disarmed.
Consider the plunder, the destruction, the starvation, the brutality, the
slave-labor camps, the torture chambers, the wholesale slaughter perpetrated by
dictatorships. Yet this is what today’s alleged peace-lovers are willing to
advocate or tolerate—in the name of love for humanity.