Peace is not what Ukraine or the world needs. "Freedom must have better weapons than Tyranny".

 Dear Editor, (Submitted to Wpost 4-14-22.  No responses as of 4-18-22.  This version has been slightly edited taking it over the Post’s normal word limit).

Gary Abernathy (Can’t we ‘Imagine” a better song for peace? 4-13-22) may not be able to imagine one, but peace shouldn’t be anyone’s highest aspiration.  Russia makes this horrifically clear.  What Ukrainians are really fighting for is freedom.  And what the world needs is to maximize humanity's freedoms and security.   The UN Security Council and its Human Rights structures can’t do that.   Thomas Paine emphasized these two essentials as the only legitimate purpose of government in his pamphlet Common Sense.  Justice is at the root of peace.   Not disarmament or powerful militaries.  And peace isn’t even our greatest threat.

Check the math.  Preventable deaths and infirmities directly related to pandemics and other infectious diseases have killed and debilitated ten times more people than wars, revolutions, genocides, and homicides combined.   Such acts of violence killed approximately 250 million people in the last century with two world wars and multiple genocides.  About the time Lennon wrote “Imagine” Smallpox alone had killed over 300 million people.  Not long after his song hit the top of the charts the world did “come together as one”.  And smallpox was globally eradicated.

Yes, Mr. Abernathy, “freedom” is worth dying for.  And as President Zelensky recently said, “freedom must be better armed than tyranny”.  Freedom lovers now need to “come together as one” and eradicate war from the planet with a planetary justice system.  But this will require engineering a planetary management system using science.  This unique method depends on words meaning something specific globally and agreed to by all.  Politics, religion, and economics each fail this test.   Words from these can mean anything the speaker or writer wants.   Albert Einstein recognized that humanity's faith in science must be combined with religion’s ‘golden rule’. A morality of justice that could lead to world peace.  But more importantly global health and environmental sustainability.  These ideals can only be achieved by human freedom.  Freedoms are only sustained by responsible and virtuous people.  Sadly, we may need more wars to achieve this ideal of freedom for generations that follow.  If they are not first killed by nuclear or biological weapons or undermined by the destruction of nature’s systems that sustain our environment.