Peace on Earth

How do you achieve World Peace? Anders Behring Breivik knows.
First you kill everyone. That's it, one step. Kill everyone and there is no one left to protect. The solution, while extreme, also cures overcrowding in schools, traffic gridlock and the common cold.

Anders Behring Breivik, a Norwegian, is the man accused of a killing spree and bomb attack in Norway, killing at least 93 people. He is responsible for a bomb attack in Oslo's government district and a shooting rampage at a youth summer camp of Norway's ruling Labour party. Breivik declared in what has been described as a rambling 1,500-page manifesto that he was on a self-appointed mission to save Europe from what he saw as the threats of Islam, immigration and multi-culturalism.

Clearly, Mr. Breivik is a troubled man. For one thing, if you want to save Europe from those threats, you attack those threats, not children at a summer camp. For another thing, he in fact has made it more difficult for anyone to oppose “the threats of Islam, immigration and multi-culturalism,” for anyone who does will be associated with him, likened to him and dismissed as insane or criminal.

That is the difficulty, you see, because if a crazy person does something horrible and wrong in order to “save the turtles” or some-such, then anyone who says they are out to “save the turtles” is suspect and may well be dismissed out-of-hand. In fact, if I were a representative of a major controversial movement, I would hire someone to go out and attack a totally disconnected venue, like MacArthur Park in Los Angeles, in the name of being against my movement. Thereafter, anyone who is against my movement would be associated with that crazed lunatic.

The time could come when anyone espousing “World Peace” would be instantly stoned in public as a terrorist and crazy person.

What Anders has done, in fact, has been to unify Norway with two causes – that of killing him and of mourning for the innocents he killed. It seems contradictory, but it's not. They are, we all are, sorry for those who died. I cannot say anything that would be enough to condemn such actions. On the other hand, given the opportunity, we would take his life in an instant and not shed a tear. The dichotomy is within us. If it is not within you, it is within me enough to cover your part.

But sitting here in America, far from the sadness, I can afford a longer view. Was Anders Behring Breivik put there by someone in order to skew the world view of Islam and those against it? Was his manifesto created by a committee of terrorists designing a mad killer for the sake of the tabloids? Is the the beginning of a series of nut-cases who will make taking a stand of any kind politically incorrect?

And the most important question of all: Is killing everyone the answer to World Peace?