Talk is Cheap

To those who are not gifted with the academic genius of Ken Herman of the Austin American Statesman, you may want to peruse his latest editorial, which claims Obama deserves his recently won Nobel Peace Prize for effort alone.

I don't know what kind of backwards world this man is living in, but in my lifetime effort amounted to nothing if no results came of it. Studying for a test all night and then flunking it the next day never got me an "A for effort" when I was in school. The Nobel Peace Prize is supposed to be a glorious award given only to those who have made the world better place to live, not some cheap token thrown at anyone who makes a promise. Hitler promised peace in Europe after seizing the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia; under the line of logic applied by Mr. Herman, he deserves the Peace Prize for his great efforts towards peace. I imagine this was the same logic that led the prize into the hands of Yassar Arafat, leader of the PLO, in 1994.

What a disgrace this is to the names of men like Martin Luther King Jr. and the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, men who not only claimed to want peace, but started movements to secure it. The movements started by these two men were far more than just effort (something, quite frankly, anyone can put forth,) but revolutions of peace that produced visible results for the good of mankind.

Now to return to the article at hand... On my first read-through I was having trouble figuring out which side Mr. Herman was for. After painting a picture of failed peace talks and outbreaks of conflict, the question is asked, "Do [these] realities make Obama's Nobel hollow or unearned?" Well geez, after detailing the failures of an all-talk-no-action approach, this almost sounded like sarcasm. Another one of these contrasts appears again when the purpose of the Prize is stated: "...the Peace Prize is for someone who 'shall have done the most or best work for fraternity between nations.'" Mr. Herman follows this quote by saying, "It doesn't say anything about results." Work is always about results, for without results the work is wasted; pointless. Efforts towards peace mean nothing if everybody is still killing one another.

To wrap up this post (which I've only now realized has nothing to do with Texas politics,) never end an editorial with the phrase, "[you] will be better off with..." King among men as you fashion yourself to be Mr. Herman, smart people disagree.