[Newspoetry] Re: Newspoetry digest, Vol 1 #1229 - 6 msgs

[Donald L Emerick]

It's helps recall the relevant body of laws,
the so-called International Laws of Nations,
which some call Jus Gentium, (cf. Jus Civilis),
when others, less politely, say Laws of War,
in referring to awful War of All Against All,
as devoids in any vague misunderstandings
about what purpose such awful laws have.

These laws aim against the very idea
of licentious unrestrained free action
by persons in wanton acts of lust or
by heads of state in acts of state:
there is no riot right among people
(and thus no derivative right to kill
among nations made up of people)
to premeditate any acts of killing,
by the unilateral use of lethal force,
in furtherance of deadly schemes.

There could only be, at most,
a pragmatic acceptance of
a least defensive force necessary
to repel foreign invasions and
to suppress domestic disturbances.

Even here, though, I personally opine
that the idea of excellence in civilization,
that is necessarily common to all of us,
means that one strives to prove to us
how much ever smaller, reductively,
one can ever make that minimum be.

Anyone who fails to try to reduce
this minimum is a throw-back barbarian:
a more primitive, too violent being,
such as even our ape-like ancestors
gradually surpassed so very long ago
in developing, by strong social norms,
well-practiced arms, wide-spread legs,
its custom inhibitions as violence blocks.

Man is only an animal who has yet to learn
that systematic killing for systematic reasons,
as most explicitly found in personal pleasure,
is a self-destructive practice that offends
the Laws of Nature, of its (various) God(s).

Rather than frivolously pass foolish laws
against alleged evils, as abort partial birth,
legislators ought to pass more rational laws
against partial social suicides and their wars.

(When man kills man, he deprives gods
of their complete powers over life and death,
rendering Acts of God legally null and void.)

The only possible reason for unilateral war
is, thus, I submit, a particular personal one,
a certain warped pleasure found in killing,
as ultimate ungodlies demonstrate against god,
supreme acts by defying rebellion against god,
an ego-usurpation of godhood(s), everywhere.

Some tough nuts crack that God makes war
by allegedly promising ethnic-cleansed lands.
The same folks hold Abraham up, exemplar.
But, when God wanted to test Abraham,
(s)he asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac,
as was an infrequent, too common practice
back then among the ancient peoples:
to sacrifice a son or a daughter to God(s).

Abraham saw no way out of this dilemma,
in thinking every word of God is a command,
just as primitive minds always hear only orders
and do not contest words as mirroring fictions.
Abraham thus set out to sacrifice Isaac,
even up to the penultimate killing stroke.
But, blind obedience never fools God:
Abraham was failing God's subtle test,
to see whether he was still a barbarian.
So, God did then what Gods always do
when foolish man is failing a crucial test:
God intervened, stayed the killing stroke,
God sent a lesser sacrificial blood to kill.

So, when that same God became enraged,
later, at the towns Sodom and Gomorrah,
and said to his ever faithful servant Abram,
"You should know, in just a few short days,
I am going to bomb this hell out of them:
by incendiary brimstone, raging fire bombs,
I mean to erase even the smallest memories
of these god-awful wicked in sinful places."

Abraham looked God squarely in the eye,
spat on the ground at his feet, and said:
"Well, surely even you could do that, sure --
but it is always unjust to kill innocent people.
What if I found a hundred righteous people
living among the multitude in those towns:
would you destroy the good with the bad,
or cause good to suffer collateral damage?"
God straightforwardly said, "No, I guess not."

So, then, Abraham pushed God's logic harder:
"Well, what if the census of the righteous
should come up a bit shy of this standard?
What if only a ten righteous ones were found
among the many thousands of wickeds there?
Would you kill innocents casually standing by?"
Again, God sorely spoke, hemming, hawing:
"Well, no, I guess not even that many good,
among so many wicked, would let me force
my justice: I'd spare everyone in such places."

Abraham tried reductionist argument once more:
"What if enough of the ten could not be found,
but some were found, by your close inspections.
Suppose only one good one could be found:
would one good man be enough to spare a million?"
But, there and then, God balked at the very idea
that one good person could save millions of lives:
"I shall evacuate the few good from wicked places,
when it becomes that small; I shall save no wicked
as I shall destroy vast heaps of garbage and trash."

(Some say that God later reduced his rigid standard
for redemption to one: that one could save the many.
But, I do not speculate from such Apocryptic texts.
Even so, God would have yet to learn highest truth:
that even the slightest possibility of good some day
might be enough of a reason to spare all evil today.)

Later on, when Abraham, who argued with God,
over the very Nature of Justice in Just War, itself,
was no more, a different leader after Moses came.
Like Abraham with Isaac, God proposed a test
to this later leader of the many children of Abram:
"Look, there is this Promised Land you can have,
but the title to the land has a clouding defect on it:
others and their heirs live lawfully on a holy land."

Well, the wayward children were wayward led,
by foolish leaders are foolish children led astray.
They thought God ordered genocide as solution:
they went jihadically to slaughter and destroy all,
the good and the bad, both righteous and wicked.

And, thus they failed for many more generations
to come into possession of the Promised Land,
as bloodshed always spoils claims to lawful title.
They failed tests of God's ever growing wisdom,
that no one, anywhere or any time, is justly taken
as prisoner into cavernous halls of gloomy death.

God is a living system, learning how to live,
living how to learn by living on its learnings,
by learning how to avoid all the system traps,
all the places where the software has errors,
where the programming is as buggy as craps,
when learned outcomes have chance inputs.
Every time the interruptive grinds the system
to a screeching halt, by visits of unjust death,
the system should recalibrate its programming,
should find its future ways pass a ring around
injustice to let good better its by-pass of bad.

So, the Body of Laws I here report upon,
like a defamed unknown Court Reporter,
is caught up in these small bits and pieces,
a pro-life responsa dogging its matriarchy
in patronic enzymes of logic's enthymemes.

Thanks for listening,
Donald L Emerick