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Timebinder, v. 1, issue 3, 1945

Page 4

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if the United States toured its CO's through these concentration camps, would they realize that their is immature idealism --- escapism, actually? Granted that States have no right to force an aggressive war upon people. Granted that the world isn't perfect. Granted that it probably won't ever be. But sitting down with one's arms crossed and saying "I don't believe". . . while barbarians make lamp shades out of human skin. . . Oh no, let's not use the name of Jesus Christ to allow such inhumanity. It is all very well to say "I won't wear diamonds because I don't like the system". If this was held consistently I would admire such tenacity of one's ideals. But I doubt extremely that the Conscientious Objector goes without food -- yet every reader that knows the farmer has had to buck the same system throughout all the ages of history. Go visit any Southern farm country and you'll see what I've seen. Oh no. Diamonds are one thing, and food another. The C.O. and his sympathizers apparently believe that while other homes are torn apart, husbands and wives separated cruelly for too-long periods, children born who will never see their fathers -- that he and his family should go their merry way unscathed. Yet we don't believe in war either. (But then, the generation which has to do the dirty work doesn't have any say in such matters, not in the past nor in the future where we are blithely unrepresented at the Conferences.) No matter what anyone has to say for the Conscientious Objector -- and here I realize that we are fighting for his freedom of belief also -- there is NO GETTING AROUND THE FACT that only an immature or perverted idealism would expect other men to give their lives for those ideals. For an individual to assert that he is independent of any group, to create his own laws and rules of existence, is to contradict Nature's basic premise that the individual by himself cannot survive, nor the race continue. Overlooking the intricacies of our own densely populated civilization, the basic unit that can survive on earth is the family. male, female and offspring, all interdependent, in every sphere of Creation. The community is a larger family -- a family of families, united for common convenience and survival. Mutual interests unite communities, and so on into nations. Al the way up the fundamentals of naked survival force man into uniting, and where there is a group there must be a group code for the common good. If a person wishes to profit from group rule, he should abide by the essential tenets without which only brute strength would survive and rule. The basic instinct is for self-protection, and the highly-involved civilization of today, self-protection for the nation is self-protection for the individual. 4
 
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