Only peace, true, worldwide peace, can stop terrorism. Not guns, not wars, not "understanding". Peace. Peace, full bellies, and hope. Hope for one's children, that they will never have to miss a meal or see a death... But it's still happening... we still have to study war, dammit. Or maybe just politics. Another loosely paraphrased quote: "When I feed the hungry, they call me a saint; when I ask why there are so many who are hungry, they call me a communist." We have the resources to feed the world. We have the resources to give everyone a cell phone and a TV, metaphorically speaking. And yeah, that might mean that I only have two TVs instead of three. But that's OK with me... as long as nobody else has three TVs. But back to the loose quotes: another founding father said, "He who is willing to give up a little of his freedom to get a little security will find that he has neither." Right now I'm watching a "Town Meeting" and some jackass is talking about "Limited Marital Law" and I'm wondering how martial law can be limited... it either is or it isn't. What, me? Paranoid? Of course I haven't done anything to be paranoid about, and that makes the paranoia even harder to shake. I've just got a bad, bad feeling. The problem is, of course, that there are people out there who hate us, hate us enough to die themselves to kill us. Killing them isn't going to do any good at all. It will turn their sons and daughters, their nephews and nieces, into the same kind of fanatics. We have to, some way or another, get them to love us. Or at the very least, tolerate us. And that means that we must love them, or, at the very least, tolerate them. Up until six days ago, I really felt that someday, we would have peace in the world, and tolerance, and be done with hate and suspicion and superstition. I no longer feel that way. I had hope for, at the far end, my great grandkids... that they might get to live forever in a perfect world. My blinders are off now. Logic and love will never rule the world, they will be broken and trampled into the bloody dust of the crusades and pograms to come. What? Me? Paranoid? Well, I watched BraveHearttonight. A welcome change of pace. Not.
Or maybe that's what they use rubber bullets for... executions after kangaroo courts.