My formative years were spent watching two hours of Simpson’s cartoons a day, an hour block from 6-7pm and a follow up block from 10-11pm.  Consequently, most of my worldviews are based on Simpson’s episodes – hence I surmised that nuclear weapon abolition is stupid.

In the second Treehouse of Horror, Lisa uses the magical severed monkey hand to wish for world peace and all of earths weapons are destroyed bringing an unprecedented era of peace and prosperity for everyone.  A good thing right?  Nope.  Kang and Kodos, everyone’s favorite human-hating aliens, attack earth and since humanity is defenseless, take over the world.  Their plan is thwarted when Moe, everyone’s favorite alcoholic-enabler, chases them off with a stick with a nail through it.

Lesson learned?  Even if you abolish all weapons we humans will find another way to mete out violence.  That’s kind of how we roll.

I’m not an advocate of producing nuclear weapons and distributing them to everybody, but I have a logical objection to the idea that the world would be inherently better if nuclear weapons were abolished.  Even if nobody had nuclear weapons, we would still be able to destroy the world with other parts of our arsenal, scorched earth, smart bombs, ICBMs, chemical warfare, “lasers” and other deadly innovations.

I want our country to have the best weapons in the world, including nukes.  Not because I want to use them, but because I’d rather us have them than the Chinese, or the French, or the English.  A world without nukes is a nice pipe dream, but it is nonetheless a pipe dream that is quickly quashed when someone invents a new pipe bomb that can take out a few city blocks.

Instead of abolishing nuclear weapons we would be better served by focusing on solving problems that threaten actual peace: Israel and Palestine, imperial foreign policy, world cup soccer, etc.