remix.

a couple years ago on my myspace blog, i put a quote from a c.s. lewis book that i was reading at the time. the weight of glory.

he's my favorite author.

it's too bad he doesn't have any babies. i wonder what c.s. lewis babies would be like. and c.s. lewis grandbabies, for me to marry.

anyway, the quote i loved that day was from an essay on pacifism. one of the issues in the upcoming election is the war, obviously. i'm not sure what the best strategy is there. should we stay? should we leave? i'm no expert. but i tend to lean on the side of "don't run away from war just because it sucks." it's kind of the nature of war to suck. and war isn't always wrong. sometimes it is. but i don't automatically assume that it's a bad idea. if you want to be against a war, you need more of a reason than "this sucks. it's been going on for a long time." but that's a different rant, for a different day. (and for the record, i'm not saying i am for or against the current one...not to avoid conflict...but because i have no idea what to think...people LIE on BOTH sides...)

TODAY, here is a quote from c.s. lewis about pacifism in general.

"All that we fear from all the kinds of adversity, severally, is collected together in the life of a soldier on active service. Like sickness, it threatens pain and death. Like poverty, it threatens ill lodging, cold, heat, thirst, and hunger. Like slavery, it threatens toil, humiliation, injustice, and abritrary rule. Like exile, it separates you from all you love. Like the gallies, it imprisons you at close quarters with uncongenial companions. It threatens every temporal evil except dishonour and final perdition, and those who bear it like it no better than you would like it. On the other side, though it may not be your fault, it is certainly a fact that Pacifism threatens you with almost nothing. Some public opprobrium, yes, from people whose opinion you discount and whose society you do not frequent, soon recompensed by the warm mutual approval which exists, inevitably, in any minority group. For the rest it offers you a continuance of the life you know and love, among the people and in the surroundings you know and love. It offers you time to lay the foundations of a career; for whether you will or no, you can hardly help getting the jobs for which the discharged soldiers will one day look in vain. You do not even have to fear, as Pacifists may have had to fear in the last war, that public opinion will punish you when the peace comes. For we have learned now that though the world is slow to forgive, it is quick to forget."