The Road to Hell....

Walter Russell Mead cuts loose on the peace activists, whom he sees as being culpable in the greatest crimes of the past century.

The people I have in mind are the ‘goo-goo genocidaires,’ the willfully blind reformers, civil society activists, clergy, students and others whose foolishness and ignorance was a necessary condition for tens of millions of deaths in the last hundred years. Unreflective, self-righteous ‘activists’ thought that to espouse peace was the same thing as to create or safeguard it. As a result, tens of millions died. Unless this kind of thinking is exposed and repudiated, it is likely to lead to as many or more deaths in the 21st.

It's an interesting perspective, with which I am not completely unsympathetic. Read the whole thing here.

RELATED:

Another lovely little essay by "Theodore Dalrymple" -- it begins:

To sympathize with those who are less fortunate is honorable and decent. A man able to commiserate only with himself would surely be neither admirable nor attractive. But every virtue can become deformed by excess, insincerity, or loose thinking into an opposing vice. Sympathy, when excessive, moves toward sentimental condescension and eventually disdain; when insincere, it becomes unctuously hypocritical; and when associated with loose thinking, it is a bad guide to policy and frequently has disastrous results. It is possible, of course, to combine all three errors.

And that is precisely what modern socialist programs aimed at alleviating poverty do. He knows whereof he speaks, and draws from personal experience in the Pacific islands, in Africa, and in the British welfare system to make his points.

Read the whole thing here.