Pope Francis predictably used his Christmas address to summon the world to peace and to turn the scourge of war into a museum piece. Just as predictably, the Pope’s plea proved a spectacular failure. The wars in Ukraine, Syria, Yemen, Myanmar, north Africa, and elsewhere did not diminish.
The Pope’s otiose words were reminiscent of Glendower’s boast to Hotspur in Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1:
Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
Hotspur: Why so can I, or so can any man; but will they come when you do call for them?
Pope Francis’ fantasy enjoys a venerated lineage. The Book of Isiah prophecies:
“They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”
Wonderful words honored in the breach rather than in the observance. Wars continued unabated.
Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount was delivered on the most blood-stained land in the entire world. Among other things, Jesus preached without result:
“Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.”
Puritan hero Oliver Cromwell paid no heed to such utopian exhortations. He instructed his Roundheads during the English Civil War:
“Trust in God and keep your powder dry.” And Cromwell prevailed.
Pope Francis, Isaiah, and Jesus stumbled because they ignored the nature of political power. Sociopaths are attracted to politics. They bring an insatiable, hormonal craving to enslave or dominate others to establish self-worth. They have philosophically empty souls. Think of Alexander the Great, Caesar Augustus, Caligula, Nero, Ivan the Terrible, Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Putin, Xi, and Donald Trump. They are not aberrations.
The time-honored delusion that good words can bring deliverance from war distracts from using reason and experience to discover an answer to the scourge of scourges. The only way to arrest the iron law of the universe, i.e., the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must, is to entrust the war power exclusively to the legislative branch, which has no incentive use it except in self-defense. The legislature is reduced to an inkblot in wartime whereas the executive grows into a mighty oak.
Every offensive war in history has been initiated by executive power. Rome created dictators to fight wars. The United States refrained from offensive wars for more than 100 years when Congress, not the President, decided on war or peace, as provided by the Constitution’s Declare War Clause. When the Clause was airbrushed out of the Constitution after World War II, gratuitous, endless presidential wars proliferated. The United States has now entered the perilous domain of permanent war by presidential decree.
The words of Pope Francis, Isiah, and Jesus were well intentioned. But they were not earthbound. They were divorced from human nature and clueless about power and domination as the source of self-esteem in a philosophically empty species.