In the old, old movie, from the H. G. Wells story, “Things to Come,” the forces of scientific good (led by Raymond Massey) use a gas to knock out warring parties, to stop the shooting, and to give the good guys a chance to disarm disputants and set things right.
1936 movie poster for "Things to Come" - WikiMedia image
That was fictional. The “Gas of Peace” doesn’t exist.
The sniping will continue about P. Z. Myers’ complaint that some Catholics grossly over reacted when they threatened death to a fellow who didn’t swallow his wafer at communion, and then kept the wafer (not a hostage — the wafer has been returned), and a lot of the sniping will come from Rod Dreher at the Dallas Morning News.
Did anyone else note the irony of Dreher’s comments commending the ideas of the late Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who campaigned his entire life against authoritative oppression of freedom and enforcement of ideas against all good and common sense, while at the same time railing against Myers’ similar campaign?
Santayana’s Ghost needs to do more active haunting. We can’t excuse tyranny from a church, nor tyranny from any government in the United States of America, either. Freedom typically works better when the freedom to offend is greater than the privilege of being free from being offended. Why doesn’t Dreher see that?
More resources:
- IMDB listing for “Things to Come”
- Nobel Prize (Literature 1976) autobiography of Alexander Solzhenitsyn
- Solzhenitsyn’s Nobel Lecture: “Just as that puzzled savage . . .”
- Tribute to Solzhenitsyn by Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
- Long Solzhenitsyn obituary in the New York Times book reviews; “Mr. Solzhenitsyn outlived by nearly 17 years the Soviet state and system he had battled through years of imprisonment, ostracism and exile.”
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 