TO THE EDITOR
men, women and children of Iraq.” The
way I look at it, every dollar I take from the
government is one less dollar spent paving
roads, damming rivers or killing people.
I don’t like the current socio-politico-
economic system, and I want to participate
in it as little as possible. That means I don’t
work much — at least not in the sense that
most people think. And when I do “work,”
I prefer jobs that are under the table and off
the radar.
Sure, a bed would be nice, a desk, some
chairs, a few plates, maybe a couch. But
I’m not going to spend money on them.
One fewer desk bought is one fewer tree
chopped down in the Amazon. One fewer
couch is one fewer batch of toxic foam rub-
ber polluting the skies of Thailand.
Maybe I will buy something — a mir-
ror. The next time someone judges me
based on my lifestyle, thinks I’m lazy,
cheap, selfish, unhappy or just plain crazy,
I can hold a mirror up to their face. If you
want to judge someone’s actions based on
the common good, maybe you should look
at your own.
Wes Ecowright
Eugene
PEACE DIVIDEND
The U.S. Department of Justice esti-
mates the ratio of cost of violence to cost of
prevention to be 7-1. By my calculations, a
U.S. economy based on violence preven-
tion and peace-building could eventually
realize an annual “peace dividend” of $1.2
trillion.
The Illinois Center for Violence
Prevention estimates direct and indirect
costs of interpersonal violence in the U.S.
at $425 billion per year. The president’s
budget proposal (FY08) includes $666 bil-
lion in current military spending. $425 +
$666 billion = $1.1 trillion. Using one
eighth of that for prevention ($136 billion)
could save the U.S. economy $955 billion.
We would still have $530 billion for de-
fense, over three times the combined mili-
tary spending of Russia, China and the six
“rogue” states.
The need for a huge military machine
would decline rapidly as world despera-
tion, the root cause of violent conflict, is
regarded seriously. An annual investment
for 10 years of $59 billion would provide
shelter, health care, AIDS control and the
elimination of starvation and malnutrition
for everyone on the planet.
As the need for a military declines over
many years, the interest on the national
debt attributable to military spending and
the costs of veteran benefits ($300 billion)
can be added to the peace dividend, to-
talling $1.2 trillion annually.
It makes “cents” to establish a cabinet-
level Department of Peace (HR 808). If
Americans can risk complete incineration
of the planet with thousands of nuclear
weapons on hair trigger alert, certainly we
can find the courage, and perhaps the san-
ity, to open our fist.
David Hazen
Eugene
WORK OF COLD HANDS
To sum up Jennifer Levin’s nice long
letter (3/8) dissing anti-“Savage Love” let-
ter writers: PRUDERY is even worse than
RUDERY. It is unfortunate that so many of
our laws, secular and religious, are written
and passed by the bony hands of prudes in-
stead of by the warm hands of decent folk
enlightened by natural and scientific real-
ity. Sex is simply Nature’s prime force for
living progress, but it cannot work well
with so many greedy folks destroying the
natural and social environments.
Bob Saxton
Eugene
RING THEM BELLS
If nothing else is ever taught in our pub-
lic school system, two particular subjects
should come before anything else: democ-
racy and fascism!
Having lived next to a neighbor who
grew up in fascist Germany, I was im-
pressed by his comparison of America
today to Hitler’s Germany during the
1930-40s. Before he died a few years ago,
he told me he was alarmed by the move-
ment from democracy to fascism that was
taking place under the Bush administra-
tion.
If our public schools were to concen-
trate on democracy and fascism before
anything else, perhaps our younger genera-
tion would be able to politically under-
stand our nation is now teetering on brink
of the same disaster that ultimately de-
stroyed Germany in 1945! The alarm bells
are ringing with little time to spare!
John Fluent
Eugene
CONTROL FREAKS
To all the readers who have written in to
disparage Dan Savage and his nationally
MARCH 29 2007 7