The international soldier is always very much disliked by internationalists. They dislike Charlemagne and Charles V and Napoleon; and everybody who tried to create the World State for which they cry aloud day and night.
-G.K. Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas, p. 35
I find this to be a timely statement by Chesterton. Many clamor for peace and unity, so long as that peace and unity means that they don’t have to submit to someone else. In other words, they say that they want peace and unity, but what they really mean is that they want everyone else to agree with them. The ‘diversity’ folk sometimes (maybe often) mean that they are for diversity as long as no one disagrees with them. They want unity as long as that unity can take place under their authority.
I just saw the newest X-Men film, interested in why it got such high reviews by both critics and the public. Interestingly, what you are talking about here was very much a central theme to the film. The good guys want peace, and juxtapose killing as being the polar opposite force of peace (which convolutes the subject purposefully.) At the climax of the film, one of the characters is given freedom to do whatever they want to do, which pacifies them, and ultimately allows for peace to come to the world.
It is the old lie, that freedom means I get to do whatever I want, and if we have such freedom, we will have peace. As you point out here, such “freedom” can never mean freedom for everyone. It just means regime change.
I found it interesting that the public largely thought this was the “best X-Men film ever.” Superhero stories are one of modernities most favorite kinds of myth, and I think, tell us alot about modernity.
You have understood everything I was trying to say (maybe better than I did). That movie sounds like a great illustration and the phrase ‘regime change’ nails it perfectly.