Friday, August 8, 2014

Quote of the Day

Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan, writes of the attractive world the Great War destroyed. She concludes with this anecdote:
Once a few years ago a reporter who had covered wars talked about this with a brilliant, accomplished, famously leftist editor in New York. At the end of a conversation on a recent conflict the reporter said, quizzically: "Why is there so much war? Why do we do that?"

"Because something's wrong with us," the editor replied.

I told him it was the best definition of original sin I'd ever heard.
Irish Peggy is a serious Roman Catholic, which shapes her response. Consider an opposite view.

As we noted recently, intra-species belligerence is evolutionarily useful in improving our species' functionality as the "killer ape." Paradoxically, short of nuclear war it has survival value. Not necessarily for any individual, but for the species.