Amish Alchemy

Thank God for Vanity Fair correspondent William Langewiesche. For a minute there I thought I was plum loco. I'm reading blogs and telling people Vesuvius is rumbling, but everyone else is shopping at the Apple Store and swaying to the music of The Grove's computerized fountain. Langewiesche’s Sunday article, “Living With the Bomb,” confirmed my suspicions and echoed my sentiments that there isn’t much we can do about North. Political bluster will likely produce negative, and possibly disastrous, results. This ain’t Celebrity Poker.

To begin with, the president’s strategy of trying to enforce restricted membership in the international nuclear club is totally cold war, not to mention impractical and arrogant. The genie is out of the bottle. The technology for making these horrific weapons is pretty common knowledge. There is no way for us to keep determined nations from acquiring nuclear arms, and I don’t see Kim Jong Il caving in to sanctions any time soon.

The United States doesn’t hold the moral high ground in this argument anyway. We are the world’s leading arms dealer, supplying more arms to more people than all other nations COMBINED! Our particular brand of amoral, free market capitalism has turned the world into an armed camp while turning a hefty profit. Plus, North Korea may have a terrible human rights record but they aren’t occupying any foreign countries. The phrase “rogue nation” cuts both ways.

So, rather than trying to face down a less-than-stable government packing nuclear six-shooters, maybe Sheriff Bush should step back into the saloon, have a stiff drink, and practice a little Amish alchemy, turning grief into gold through the process of forgiveness. That’s what the real Christians do.