How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin.

• Nick Berg was a grown man and a civilian, in Iraq voluntarily for non-military purposes
• Nick Berg was, in fact, not killed by George W. Bush
• Michael Berg is running for Congress, and doing a splendid job of using his son's death to launch his political career
• Papa Berg is the MSM exploitation-of-the-week

And so on. So I won't bother getting into all of that. But there's something else in the Berg interview that rang in the back of my mind. He said:

As long as people use violence to combat violence, we will always have violence.

[...] I have never indicated anything but forgiveness and peace in any interview on the air.

When Nick was killed, I felt that I had nothing left to lose. I'm a pacifist, so I wasn't going out murdering people.

This reminded me of an essay Carl Sagan once wrote called "The Rules of the Game." In it, he asks if there might be a scientific way of measuring the moral codes that have regulated the behavior of man "since the dawn of civilization."

He begins with, but dismisses, the Golden Rule as being too forgiving:

"The most admired standard of behavior, in the West, at least, is the Golden Rule, attributed to Jesus of Nazareth. Everyone knows its formulation in the first-century Gospel of St. Matthew: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Almost no one follows it. When the Chinese philosopher Kung-Tzu (known as Confucius in the West) was asked in the fifth century B.C. his opinion of the Golden Rule, of repaying evil with kindness, he replied, "Then with what will you repay kindness?" Shall the poor woman who envies her neighbor's wealth give what little she has to the rich? Shall the masochist inflict pain on his neighbor? The Golden Rule takes no account of human differences. Are we really capable, after our cheek has been slapped, of turning the other cheek so it can be slapped? With a heartless adversary, isn't this just a guarantee of more suffering?"

Sagan went on to describe other morality rules, such as the Silver, Brazen, and Iron rules (and Tin, of his own devising). But he also dismisses these as being either too lenient or too unforgiving:

"The Golden and Silver Rules seem too complacent. They systematically fail to punish cruelty and exploitation. They hope to coax people from evil to good by showing that kindness is possible. But there are sociopaths who do not much care about the feelings of others, and it is hard to imagine a Hitler or Stalin being shamed into redemption by good example. Is there a rule between the Golden and Silver on the one hand and the Brazen, Iron and Tin on the other which works better than any of them alone?"

Sagan ends up settling on "The Tit-for-Tat" rule, which is essentially the Brass or Brazen Rule (Do unto others as they do unto you), except this rule always employs an initial, peaceful approach to all others, right up until you are grieved. Indeed, the Tit-for-Tat "involves an interesting mix of proclivities: initial friendliness, willingness to forgive, and fearless retaliation." But this rule loses its effectiveness if everyone playing doesn't fully understand the latter half: Cooperate with others first, then do unto them as they do unto you.

Whether Berg believes his rhetoric or not is a matter of speculation, and largely irrelevant. What does matter is his broadcast that we are somehow in solidarity in our sole employment of the Golden Rule, and no fear of retaliation is warranted if someone should assail us. This endangers us equally if not more so than overt acts of aggression, but the Left chooses to only view a single side of this issue: unmitigated peace, at all costs.

Whatever Berg's personal and political motivations may be behind condemning Iraq, his son was killed by al-Qaeda. The very mentioning of Saddam Hussein is setting up a straw man, one easily devoured by the media and the Left. Kudos to his political savvy, granted, but it's also a clear window into this man's character. While Ann Coulter might be tempted to say that she's never seen a grieving father enjoying his son's death so much, for my part, I'm just wondering: If Michael Berg cannot "be glad that another human being is dead," then how can he not have - at the very minimum - a desire for justice to be served to the murderer of his son?

Cooperate with others first, then do unto them as they do unto you.

On a semi-related note, this man's a socialist.