Whatever happened to “Blessed are the Peacemakers”?

Obama has raised the idea of trying to dramatically cut back the number of nuclear weapons in the world. Though couched in all sorts of caveats (continued work on missile defense vs. Iran, eschewing total disarmament, noting it’s a goal unlikely to come to pass even in his lifetime, etc.), he made it clear that the US has a “moral responsibility” to do something about the matter.

In response to which, of course, the right-wing punditry goes wild, starting with “Morning Joe” Scarborough.

This morning, on “Morning Joe,” the former Republican congressman from Florida, with a child-like tone, equated eliminating nuclear arsenals with missiles that “can shoot dandelions,” banning “hate,” and altering the one-dollar bill to encourage Americans to “turn their frowns upside down.” For Scarborough, the very idea of the U.S. launching a global initiative to rid the world of nuclear weapons is so ridiculous, it doesn’t even deserve scrutiny. Instead of discussing the idea, the MSNBC personality jumped straight to mockery.

Yeah! Yeah! Dirty peacenik redski hippie disarmament freaks! Where the hell do they come off thinking that getting rid of the nukes is a good idea? 

Obama’s proposal is very much in line with the bipartisan approach outlined two years ago by George Shultz, secretary of state in the Reagan administration; Henry Kissinger, secretary of state in the Nixon and Ford administrations; William Perry, secretary of defense in the Clinton administration; and Sam Nunn, a former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

It’s also in line with the vision articulated by Ronald Reagan, who called for the abolishment of “all nuclear weapons,” which he considered to be “totally irrational, totally inhumane, good for nothing but killing, possibly destructive of life on earth and civilization.”

Ronald Reagan? Isn’t he the one who also said, “My dream became a world free of nuclear weapons,” and who once suggested to some Russki while visiting Iceland (another Euro-commie country) “going to zero” on nukes? Yeah, well, you know those commiesymp Hollywood actors … socialists and wusses and castle-in-the-sky types, all of ’em. 

Amazing.