Establishment of a cabinet-level Department of Peace (www.dopcampaign.org) would give institutional heft to resolving our #1 preventable global and national public health and safety problem—violence—addressing its root causes, and building a national and global culture of peace.

Domestically, a Department of Peace would heal problems such as bullying, gangs, alienation, cruelty, racism, ethnic and homophobic intolerance, drug and alcohol problems, social injustices, crime, incarceration and recidivism, the spread of weapons, and child, elder, and spousal abuse, through proven programs teaching values, peer mediation, violence-prevention counseling, restorative justice, and other successful non-violent approaches.

Internationally, a Secretary of Peace would partner with defense and diplomatic leaders to insure that American soldiers never march into ill-planned or unnecessary wars; provide non-violent alternative conflict-resolution strategies in every possible conflict area of the world; prevent and de-escalate conflicts before they boil over into deadly violence; ask hard questions when war seems inevitable; and offer a strong counterweight to misuse of military might.

America cannot shoot its way out of a world full of angry, well-armed enemies, criminals, and crazies, and we cannot find solutions to tomorrow’s problems using the same approaches that got us into this trouble in the first place. In today’s tiny, interconnected world, how we treat others will always come back to help or harm us—however randomly—as we have chosen. We must demonstrate the best practices of humanity—or fear, fight, and express humanity at its worst.

We cannot avoid suffering some injustices, as Virginia Tech’s tragic victims attest, but we can avoid adding to their sum. We no longer have a choice of changing or not changing. Our only choice now is whether to change for the better or for the worse. As our forebears courageously risked war, it is time for us now to risk peace.