On August 5, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster informed MSNBC that the Pentagon had plans to counter the “growing threat” from North Korea—by launching a “preventative war.”

Note: When someone armed with world-ending weapons is speaking, language is important.

For example: a “threat” is merely an expression. It may be annoying, or even provocative, but it is something that falls well short of a physical “attack.”

“Preventative war” is a euphemism for “armed aggression”—an action the International Criminal Court identifies as “the ultimate war crime.” The slippery phrase “preventative war” serves to transform the aggressor into a “potential” victim, responding to a perceived “future crime” by acting in “self-defense.”

“There are no good options,” Brian Williams said the other night on MSNBC, launching a discussion about North Korea with the implication that war — maybe nuclear war — is the only solution to the problem it represents.

We’ve been cradling our own suicide for seven decades. The baby’s eyes open . . .

For those of us committed to systematically reducing and, one day,
ending human violence, it is vital to understand what is causing and
driving it so that effective strategies can be developed for dealing
with violence in its myriad contexts. For an understanding of the
fundamental cause of violence, see 'Why Violence?'
http://tinyurl.com/whyviolence

However, while we can tackle violence at its source by each of us making
and implementing 'My Promise to Children',

Colin Kaepernick, the former quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers, is being blackballed — itself a revealing phrase — from the National Football League with the collusion of the all-white owners. He is ostracized because a year ago he exercised his First Amendment right to free speech by taking a knee during the playing of the national anthem.

Kaepernick isn’t hooked on drugs. He isn’t a felon. He hasn’t brutalized women. He is treated as a pariah because he protested the continued oppression “of black people and people of color.” He wanted, he said, to make people “realize what’s going on in this country. … There are a lot of things going on that are unjust, people aren’t being held accountable for, and that’s something that needs to change.” Born in Milwaukee, Wis., one of the most racially segregated cities in America, Kaepernick is particularly concerned about police brutality and the shocking police shootings of unarmed African Americans.

The historians are coming.

Across the country, untold millions have suddenly awakened to the historical significance of various and sundry statues honoring the great Confederate generals of the Civil War. While their energy is no doubt commendable, their newfound knowledge has not yet permitted them to draw a distinction between education and glorification.

Our newly minted annalists, while wrong-headed, are not necessarily wrong. Although these triumphant monuments are somewhat misleading about the war’s outcome, they are quite informative about the Jim Crow era in which they were built. They also provide renewed motivation for debunking the “lost cause” historical narrative that has convinced generations of schoolchildren that the Civil War was fought by noble southerners over some obscure federalism issue.