To the Editor:
Jack Brush’s article entitled A Circle of Violence (Feb. 18, 2014) reminds one of the many opinions espoused during the 1930’s rationalizing the USA staying neutral during the lead up to WW II. In his well meaning and written article Mr. Brush has a brush up with moral equivalence. His augment is somewhat analogous to a husband and a wife getting into a very heated argument.
So much so the husband in his anger consumes a prodigious amount of liquor drives off in his truck and slams into to a SUV killing a mother and her four children. Imagine the police then informing the grieving father to understand the cause of his loss rests in part with the wife because she started the argument. That would be moral equivalence.
Several years ago two different artist blasphemed Christianity by one exhibiting Christ in piss and the other the Virgin Mary splattered with excreta. I doubt Mr. Brush expressed his moral outrage at those acts in writing in any publication nor did he praise the nonviolent reaction of offended Christians.
Whether intentional or not Mr. Brush failed to mention Omar al-Hussein followed up his initial killing with the killing of a Jew whose sole crime was to stand guard in front of a building where young boys were the center of an important religious rite.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” I don’t believe in reincarnation but it is my observation Neville Chamberlain is now back today in many forms including some polemicists. My real concern is I have yet to see a Churchill among our existing political elite. Maybe if he or she appears and it is not too late, even Mr. Brush will be grateful.
Don Hillman
Village of Pennecamp
