Posted 2:33 PM by Gene

BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURP:

It's interesting about the Nobel Peace Prize -- unlike the quirky and PC-conscious prize for Literature, or the quasi-Nobel "medal" in economics -- that its list of winners holds up very, very well under historical scrutiny.

We will trust Jim to know this -- he's the type who seems to know everything -- although for the life of us we have heard of only five of the medal winners from before 1950; most of them sound like diplomats with starched collars and thick whiskers; we note Neville Chamberlain's half-brother is on the list. (We do not count the many years "Reserved" won the prize, presumably because there wasn't much peace to be had those years.) In the main it is still a good-intentions prize, as is summed up by the awards that don't hold up that well -- like Menachem and Anwar, whose peace is the peace of two nations standing with their backs against each other, or Kofi Annan, whose award was -- richly deserved. (Then there's the kooky triumvirate of '94.) How Woodrow Wilson's name holds up given all the wars that followed him is debatable. There are two or three true heroes in the bunch: the award for Andrei Sakharov was perhaps the Dynamite Prize's sole instance of real courage. Possibly the only man on the list who brought true peace was Gen. Marshall, aptly honored for his plan, which saved Western Europe. A TNR tantrum thrower can sneer that "ACCORDING TO CONSERVATIVE TALK RADIO, THE NOBEL PRIZE HAS BECOME THE 'LEFT-WING MAN OF THE YEAR AWARD', WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!", but we would challenge even the most reasonable liberal to find a modern movement conservative in the recent bunch, if he could.