AUGUST 10, 2013

   I read that President Obama has cancelled a planned summit with Russia's President Putin.   One reason given in news reports was Obama's anger at Russia's decision to give leaker-defector Edward Snowden asylum for a year. Well, different things anger different folks.  I personally would probably have agreed to pay Russia a few bucks to take Snowden for a year.  I mean, is he really the kind of guy you want living down the block?

     But there's another reason why this is, in a funny way, good news.  Nobody thinks it will bring on World War III.  Once upon a time, when Russia and its neighbors were still the mighty, touchy Soviet Union, that wasn't so.

     I still remember, when I was a kid early in the atomic age, a preacher saying, "For the first time, man has the power to destroy God's created order."  We still have it, of course;  nobody is throwing away nuclear weapons.  But the worry that we might blow up the planet is less now, on, I think, both sides.

     And that's genuine good news.  Quarrel?  Sure.  Immolate Earth?  Probably not.  I don't miss the Cold War--do you?