Former Congressman Dennis Kucinich speaks at the 2013 International Students for Liberty Conference in Washington, D.C. (Wikimedia Commons/Gage Skidmore)
by John Dear
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On this week's episode of "The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast," I speak with Dennis Kucinich, former congressman from Ohio from 1997 to 2013 who has been an outspoken voice against war. He was one of the leading voices against the U.S. war on Iraq, which killed hundreds of thousands of people. He also called for the impeachment of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
I met Dennis about a month after 9/11, when New Jersey Peace Action decided to give us their annual peacemaker awards together. We were both told to meet on a Sunday morning at a country club in New Jersey, and when we each got there around 10 a.m., as I recall, we were the only ones there. So, we took a long walk on the golf course, shared our stories and became friends. Later, at the 1 p.m. luncheon, we spoke to a room full of New Jersey peace activists.
"Is it possible to live a life that espouses peace?" Dennis asks. "What is peace? It's an active presence of a capacity for reflection and alignment with love, brother and sisterhood and understanding the meaning of the golden rule. We are interconnected and interdependent and we are all children of God. We are at a pivot point in the history of the U.S. right now. Unless we stop licensing, funding and creating implements of war, we will not survive as a nation."
"War is one of the gravest offenses because it takes away people's lives in a way that makes no sense," he continued. "War is original sin. We're living in a time right now where there is an active genocide in the Middle East. We have to recognize wrong when we see it and call it what it is. We have to set fear aside and summon the courage to speak out."
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