The Peacemaker of the American west was a Colt 45. What does Peacemaker mean to you?
I’ll start. A peacemaker would be someone within a community, preferably a peer, who polices the activities between fellow members such as to temper the periodic injustice to which human nature is prone. Fair enough?
A peacemaker would not be an overseer of slaves for example, bent on keeping the oppressed from overwhelming their master. Not a peacekeeper. A peacekeeper would not be a security guard contracted to keep a population from disrupting the extraction of mineral wealth of a country by a foreign corporation. Not a peacemaker. A peacemaker is not a caretaker of properties fretted over by international investors. A peacemaker would not be a foreign soldier sent in to protect the sovereignty of a ruling elite who no longer can control the displeasure of their impoverished subjects. A peacemaker would not be an international police agency trying to quell a civil war, where revolutionaries are trying to free the people of their post-colonial dead weight.
A UN peacemaker in Africa is often a white cop in a black neighborhood. A United African peacemaker is often a neighbor’s soldiers occupying your land. Foreign intervention into the affairs of a sovereign nation is an invasion. Interrupting the violence of a people’s uprising is to shove into their throats more fistfuls of the status quo. And call it keeping the peace.
The principle of an international governing body such as the UN being able to dispatch peacekeepers who have no ulterior motive is an honorable one. The principle of an international body being able to make loans to small nations to provide aid for their development is likewise honorable, unless the bureaucrats in between are corrupt.
A peacemaker is meant to maintain a peaceful equilibrium, but the equilibrium must be just. The Justice and Peace movements worldwide say: no peace without justice. And who is it that’s pursuing the justice beside the reformers and the rebels? It’s not the banks.
No peacemakers without justice makers.
Can you explain what a ‘dynamic pacemaker’ is, Eric? In fact, I’m not even sure what a ‘dynamic’ is?
You said it all. Now we can look for those within a community who motivate others to work toward justice for all in order to establish and maintain a peaceful place to live, work and play. Would they then be the dynamic pacemakers?
Dynamic pacemakers, peacemakers, what nall? What we need is a lot less of the bully and Rambo in American life. The bully Bush tough guy types without a brain we have enough of already. So let’s send all the Dicks, Rushes, Bills, and Anns to reeducation camps where they can be taught some manners or two. And if they refuse to learn, then hang ’em.
BTW, the Dynamic Peacemaker position at my church is soon to be vacant, and I’m thinking about applying. I sincerely hope for all your votes. Gandhi be with you.