Oh Yeah, THESE Guys Have a Grip On Reality

This Austrailian report on the Bali bombers contains this wonderful quotation:

Ironically, from a terrorist accused not only of the Bali bombing but of church bombings and the bombing of an ambassador's residence in Jakarta, Sawad claimed he had a message of peace for the world.

"For all human beings to stop now in this world, destroy all of the destructive weapons . . . if there were no weapons then peace can be created," he said.

Right. Let's just roll everything back to when human beings were all peaceful agrarians who never had any conflicts.

Except that "reality" never was.

Then people were ruled by large men with swords. And the guy who has the most sword-wielders wins. Before that, it was large men with clubs. Check your history. It has never been peaceful. And the further back you go the less power the individual had. They were the fodder and the victims of nearly endless conflict through being directly overrun by battle, starved and diseased by the effects of war, or taxed into oblivion to support war.

Thank you very much, but I'll take the present - with "all of the destructive weapons" and everything that goes with them. As weapons technology has advanced, the power of the lowly individual has too. As the French learned to their discomfort at Agincourt, British peons with bows were superior to armored noblemen on horseback. It doesn't take a lifetime of training to be useful with a rifle, and as the Samurai discovered during the Meiji Restoration, peasants with rifles are superior to noblemen with swords and bows. And as the Battle of Athens proved, arms in the hands of citizens can defeat corrupt government even in modern times.

When only government holds the sword, the people can either submit, or perish - and government will never put down its sword.