Peace in any time

As mentioned above, there has been no real shortage of major violent conflicts since the close of World War Two, and we all know that there was no shortage of them before that. In other words, the world never lacks a war, even though nowadays we don't call them by that name, ever, though it has become fashionable not to "declare war," thus committing oneself to "victory"-and possibly annoying one's people with a sense of insecurity that might make them question their leaders.

Dr. Spock, Senator Eugene McCarthy and quite a sizable number of others raised their voices against the Vietnam War in the U. S. recently, and as a result they toppled Lyndon Johnson from his pinnacle of power, forcing him to think the wiser of running in the 1968 election. And yet a measure of the futility of the peace movement's endeavors can be witnessed in the fact that not one of the three serious presidential candidates is running on a peace platform. In fact, the most "dove-ish" of the three is the Vice-President, the very man most committed to defending the administration's policy.

The peace movement-and by this I mean not only the present McCarthy-and Spock-led insurrection, but the cause of world peace itself, going back at least to the Hague Conferences which preceded the First World War, and following through the League of Nations which preceded the Second, right up to our own United Nations-the peace movement has proved itself a dismal failure. In fact, the more vocal and determined our peace advocates are, the more horrifying and all-inclusive grow the wars that punctuate their protestations, until today we await, half-expectantly, the moment when someone presses The Button, and our glittering civilization goes up in a white hot flash.

The reasons for this are not very apparent: The way men feel in their hearts is not a topic for newspaper headlines. But it is necessary to understand that nations cannot be peaceful if their individuals are belligerent, they cannot be sane if their people are mad, they cannot be stable if their inhabitants are disgusted and discontent. The international situation that confronts us today is only a magnification of the interpersonal situation of exploitation, deception and malice which forms the daily atmosphere of our lives. And so long as the more basic problem remains unsolved, the larger one will not be solved either.

Dr. Spock has reached much the same conclusion, as he pointed out in a recent interview. "It seems to me," he said, "that I see that the problems of America and the problems of the world are moral problems." And, further: "Man can't live without a moral sense. He is a naturally religious person, or at least a believing person. When he becomes disenchanted or cynical he turns rotten very fast. He has to have moral, ethical and preferably religious beliefs."

The trouble here, of course, is not morality itself. It's not as though Lyndon Johnson and Dean Rusk have declared themselves against it, and have launched a policy of deliberate evil upon the world, or that they don't believe in anything. Quite the contrary, they're fully convinced, it seems clear, that theirs is the truly moral course, and the prosecution of Spock and numerous others in the courts is a natural corollary to such a concept of morality. And the conflict now existing between the hawks and the doves is not a matter of the moral vs. the amoral; it is a question of whose morality is correct.

This was made glaringly apparent in a Meet the Press interview last January, when Douglas Kiker of NBC News asked the Reverend Wm. Coffin, one of Spock's co-defendants in the conspiracy case, whether he was "advocating" that young men turn in their draft cards in protest of the war. The Rev. Coffin replied: "…if you came to me as a student at Yale and said 'Should I turn in my draft card' the last thing I would ever tell you to do is turn in your draft card. That is such an eminently personal decision that you have to make it yourself."

The point of most of the newsmen's questions on that occasion, and the point which led to the conviction in court, the point Rev. Coffin seemed strangely to avoid, is whether men can decide for themselves what is moral and what is not. The legalist, the "Establishment," says that men cannot, that society depends upon men agreeing among themselves as to what they may and may not do-and then sticking to the agreement. The peace activists, strangely enough, do not disagree with this view, with the exception of a small anarchist element. What the peace activists say, however, is that a small group-America's "military-industrial elite"-have usurped the power of agreement from the people, and are forcing a war upon them which they do not desire, and that this "elite" is, therefore, damaging society.

To go on from here any further into the pros and cons, the moralities and amoralities of the particular Vietnam issue can only involve us in the sort of bickering which everyone else has so fruitlessly engaged in for so many long years. Instead, let's step back a pace and examine the situation in a slightly different light. This is the light of spiritual knowledge, as it is conveyed to us not by our individual "consciences"-which I do not doubt both Johnson and Spock possess equally-but spiritual knowledge as it is found in the scriptural teachings of the world.

For what the Rev. Coffin failed to establish in his rather lame retorts to the Meet the Press panel was that morality is not created by men, whether in a mob or alone. In any dispute between two parties to which no compromise or solution can be found, there must be a resort to a third party-a higher, standard authority, who can judge the situation properly. And the authority in questions of morality can only be God, the Absolute Truth. To realize why this is so, why an ordinary handshake between the President and the pediatrician can't solve things, to see how there could be an irrevocable right or wrong beyond the letter of the law, we must inquire into the nature of morality itself.

Public morality means the good of the people. And according to the standard Scriptures of the world, the real good, the very perfection of human life, lies in each being's personal confrontation with the Godhead, known in the Vedic writings as Sri Krishna. Because Krishna is absolute-that is, because He is the supreme good for every single being at every single moment without limit in time or space-knowledge of Krishna is the only worthwhile goal of human life.

No government can, therefore, offer anything to its people which is beneficial-neither money nor power nor peace-if it fails to offer an approach to God. And any dissenting movement, regardless of the particular situation, must be judged by the same standard. Now, if God realization is the only true goal of human existence, then morality-the good of the people-indicates whatever way of life will bring them to this stage. And, except in terms of this pursuit of God realization, "morality" does not exist.

Further, the approach to God cannot be created at a convention of human minds; it has already been outlined by God Himself, as He has directly addressed mankind through The Holy Bible, The Koran, The Bhagavad-gita, and the other Scriptures of the world. Therefore what is necessary now, for Dr. Spock and the Rev. Coffin quite as surely as for President Johnson and his allies, is to look into the directions and teachings of the Scriptures. The solution to the problems of war and peace can be found there, because the single valid, irrevocable standard of morality can be found there: the guidance and revelation of God, Who declares Himself in The Gita to be the Friend and Maintainer of all creatures without exception or discrimination. Without reference to this standard of morality, neither the doves nor the hawks can actually claim morality as their own.