Freud’s civilization revisited in the nuclear age: commentary on O’Brien’s conclusions

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This comment is a constructive criticism of Professor John C. O’Brien’s interesting and provocative article: “Freud’s civilization revisited in the nuclear age.” It is my conviction that both Freud and O’Brien underestimate the power of Christianity in the creation and in the defense of Western civilization. The threat of a nuclear holocaust is an ever present danger, but the remedy for this danger is not the nuclear disarmament that O’Brien advocates, because the disarmament treaty would be unenforceable. Rather, the protection against the nuclear threat is for the USA to maintain an overwhelming arsenal of second‐strike nuclear weapons and to use the threat of retaliation to enforce an American peace that would be analogous to the Roman peace which that empire enforced during two centuries of ancient history.