Seeking Peace Through a Personal Prism

Barbara Kingsolver and the remnants of the leftist ‘60s are squirming in their peacenik souls, watching the country waving flags and uniting behind a determined president (“A Pure, High Note of Anguish,” Opinion, Sept. 23). After boiling down her “I feel everybody’s pain” drivel, what remains is the old leftist argument of moral equivalency. We Americans are just as guilty of terrorism (Hiroshima, Nicaragua, etc.) as anyone else, so the argument goes, but in our arrogance and isolation we’ve never “felt” its consequences. Or, to quote her, “Some people believe our country needed to learn how to hurt in this new way.”

See, folks, this attack, terrible as it was, is therapeutic. It has shattered our denial of our own guilt. Kingsolver and the other sad-sack ‘60s peace-at-any-price dinosaurs want to set us free to mend our violent ways, flash the peace sign and have us all sing Beatles songs as the Empire State Building, the Sears Tower and the Rose Bowl disappear into rubble and smoke.

Carl Moore

Lomita

*

Right next to “Home Sweet Home” I would like to hang another homily drawn from a quote by Kingsolver that brought a sharp pain to my heart and that continues to resonate in my soul.

“Every war is both won and lost, and that loss is a pure, high note of anguish like a mother singing to an empty bed. . . . No kind of bomb ever built will extinguish hatred.”

May we hold that thought high and continue to come together under the tent of human kindness and love as so many have at several interfaith services.

Jacqueline D. Knowles

Sierra Madre