‘Moral Violence’ Is an Oxymoron

I hope the barbarity of Dennis Prager’s paean to violence will shock future generations less inclined to consider the intentional killing of human beings a “moral good” (Commentary, May 2). In the meantime, I can only remind readers that those pacifists whom Prager calls liars and who he says “cannot be taken seriously on a moral basis” include Gandhi, King, Einstein, Jesus and Buddha.

It is Prager who loses his moral compass while celebrating the short-term, pyrrhic victories of warfare. Rather than chastise those parents who discourage young boys from indulging their appetites for violence on TV, Prager would do well to consider carefully the words of someone who thought long and hard about the morality of war: “I object to violence,” Gandhi wrote, “because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.”

David Howard

Ojai