No one in the Confederation regretted the loss of the treasonous intellectual scum who, perhaps more than anyone else, bore the responsibility for what had happened to the old USA.
“What about the women?” I asked.
“These women despise anyone who looks upon them as women,” Kraft responded. “They spit on the word ‘lady.’ If a man opens a door for them, they kick him in the shins. They demand to be treated equally. Let it be unto them according to their wish.”
As a butcher and a tyrant, Hitler ran a distant second to Stalin. That didn’t excuse him, but I found it difficult to put a higher moral value on six million Jews than on eight million Ukrainian Christians, not to mention the other 52 million killed by Soviet communism. Or the 78 million Chinese and Tibetans killed by its Maoist strain.
Nazi efficiency had its hellish aspect, but chaos was a greater hell.
Were symbols chosen by men of actions rather than poets and painters, they would be very different. The symbol of war would be a hand reaching out toward another, for war makes brothers of men.
The symbol of peace would be a sword, for peace divides.
—Chapter 45