Turning Sand into Ice Cream

Michael Kinsley, a tough, hard-nosed neo-conservative, writing in Time 11-20-06, said: "I'm in favor of toppling dictators, establishing democracy and watching it spread painlessly throughout every region where there is no experience of it. Not only that, I am in favor of turning sand into ice cream and guaranteeing a cone to every child in the Middle East."

Only blind ignorance and arrogance believe this can be accomplished by demolishing these children’s homes, striking them with the shrapnel of “collateral damage,” and soaking their soil with blood, both ours and theirs. This abuse goes beyond child and spouse abuse; it proceeds on to the ultimate in physical abuse.

The alchemy of converting sand into ice cream will be possible once we have killed all of those who don’t want peace.

There are many recipes for ice cream. There are old-fashioned, wooden, hand-cranked ice cream freezers, plastic electric freezers, and other kinds of ice cream making machines. Nonetheless, there are definite parameters that must be accepted, both in recipes and in the freezing process.

Ice cream cannot be made with granite, sawdust, and nitric acid, nor can it be frozen in a blast furnace. Neither lasting peace nor worry-free security can be coerced.