Talk on why nuclear weapons are incompatible with the U.S. Constitution and Human Rights in particular. Talk covers only several chapters of her book exploring the nature of burns, blast rings, the social contract and fundamental Human Rights. She offers a unique re-framing of the much under considered fact that one man, the President of the United States has the power to end life for every one else. She discusses warheads and targeting and the difference between personal and statistical compassion which places all of us at risk of being "caught off guard" to quote a line from a poem written in August of 1952 to commemorate the Hiroshima bombing by a Japanese woman who survived the war.
With increasing accounts now coming out of how close the intentional or accidental use of nuclear weapons has come, her analysis empowers one to grasp the scam of "nuclear security"; a myth that has profited industrial corporations and created a priest hood of scientists and academics and military. She explores the issue of who gets to say on matters of collective life or death and offers a way to disarm the existential threat of nuclear weapons. In exploring the process of decision making, she addresses why Congress has become almost irrelevant to a matter that the Framers considered paramount to it's responsibility.
Chicago Area Peace Action
Elaine Scarry | Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and General Theory of Value; Harvard College Professor