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From the Inbox: All European Life Died In Auschwitz

The tidal wave of rabidly anti-Islamic sentiment in the US following 9-11 turned me off to the entire issue of Islamic influences in our country.  I don't know how technically accurate the following information is with respect to Muslims, but I do know the Jewish info is largely correct.  The Holocaust was a far greater tragedy than I think hardly any of my generation understand.

********************* 

Date: Tue. 15 January 2008 14:30

ALL EUROPEAN LIFE DIED IN AUSCHWITZ By Sebastian Vilar Rodrigez

I walked down the street in Barcelona , and suddenly discovered a terrible truth - Europe died in Auschwitz .... We killed six million Jews and replaced them with 20 million Muslims. In Auschwitz we burned a culture, thought, creativity, talent. We destroyed the chosen people, truly chosen, because they produced great and wonderful people who changed the world.

The contribution of this people is felt in all areas of life: science, art, international trade, and above all, as the conscience of the world. These are the people we burned.

And under the pretense of tolerance, and because we wanted to prove to ourselves that we were cured of the disease of racism, we opened our gates to 20 million Muslims, who brought us stupidity and ignorance, religious extremism and lack of tolerance, crime and poverty, due to an unwillingness to work and support their families with pride.

They have blown up our trains and turned our beautiful Spanish cities into the third world, drowning in filth and crime.

Shut up in the apartments they receive free from the government, they plan the murder and destruction of their naive hosts.

And thus, in our misery, we have exchanged culture for fanatical hatred, creative skill for destructive skill, intelligence for backwardness and superstition.

We have exchanged the pursuit of peace of the Jews of Europe and their talent for a better future for their children, their determined clinging to life because life is holy, for those who pursue death, for people consumed by the desire for death for themselves and others, for our children and theirs.

What a terrible mistake was made by miserable Europe ...

***********************************

And now, for some interesting numbers and commentary (not part of the above piece, but came in the same email):

The Global Islamic population is approximately 1,200,000,000; that is ONE BILLION TWO HUNDRED MILLION or 20% of the world's population. They have received the following Nobel Prizes:

Literature:
1988 - Najib Mahfooz

Peace:
1978 - Mohamed Anwar El-Sadat
1990 - Elias James Corey
1994 - Yaser Arafat:
1999 - Ahmed Zewai

Economics:
(zero)

Physics:
(zero)

Medicine:
1960 - Peter Brian Medawar
1998 - Ferid Mourad

TOTAL: 7 SEVEN

The Global Jewish population is approximately 14,000,000; that is FOURTEEN MILLION or about 0.02% of the world's population. They have received the following Nobel Prizes:

Literature:
1910 - Paul Heyse
1927 - Henri Bergson
1958 - Boris Pasternak
1966 - Shmuel Yosef Agnon
1966 - Nelly Sachs
1976 - Saul Bellow
1978 - Isaac Bashevis Singer
1981 - Elias Canetti
1987 - Joseph Brodsky
1991 - Nadine Gordimer World

Peace:
1911 - Alfred Fried
1911 - Tobias Michael Carel Asser
1968 - Rene Cassin
1973 - Henry Kissinger
1978 - Menachem Begin
1986 - Elie Wiesel
1994 - Shimon Peres
1994 - Yitzhak Rabin

Physics:
1905 - Adolph Von Baeyer
1906 - Henri Moissan
1907 - Albert Abraham Michelson
1908 - Gabriel Lippmann
1910 - Otto Wallach
1915 - Richard Willstaetter
1918 - Fritz Haber
1921 - Albert Einstein
1922 - Niels Bohr
1925 - James Franck
1925 - Gustav Hertz
1943 - Gustav Stern
1943 - George Charles de Hevesy
1944 - Isidor Issac Rabi
1952 - Felix Bloch
1954 - Max Born
1958 - Igor Tamm
1959 - Emilio Segre
1960 - Donald A. Glaser
1961 - Robert Hofstadter
1961 - Melvin Calvin
1962 - Lev Davidovich Landau
1962 - Max Ferdinand Perutz
1965 - Richard Phillips Feynman
1965 - Julian Schwinger
1969 - Murray Gell-Mann
1971 - Dennis Gabor
1972 - William Howard Stein
1973 - Brian David Josephson
1975 - Benjamin Mottleson
1976 - Burton Richter
1977 - Ilya Prigogine
1978 - Arno Allan Penzias
1978 - Peter L Kapitza
1979 - Stephen Weinberg
1979 - Sheldon Glashow
1979 - Herbert Charles Brown
1980 - Paul Berg
1980 - Walter Gilbert
1981 - Roald Hoffmann
1982 - Aaron Klug
1985 - Albert A. Hauptman
1985 - Jerome Karle
1986 - Dudley R. Herschbach
1988 - Robert Huber
1988 - Leon Lederman
1988 - Melvin Schwartz
1988 - Jack Steinberger
1989 - Sidney Altman
1990 - Jerome Friedman
1992 - Rudolph Marcus
1995 - Martin Perl
2000 - Alan J. Heeger

Economics:
1970 - Paul Anthony Samuelson
1971 - Simon Kuznets
1972 - Kenneth Joseph Arrow
1975 - Leonid Kantorovich
1976 - Milton Friedman
1978 - Herbert A. Simon
1980 - Lawrence Robert Klein
1985 - Franco Modigliani
1987 - Robert M. Solow
1990 - Harry Markowitz
1990 - Merton Miller
1992 - Gary Becker
1993 - Robert Fogel

Medicine:
1908 - Elie Metchnikoff
1908 - Paul Erlich
1914 - Robert Barany
1922 - Otto Meyerhof
1930 - Karl Landsteiner
1931 - Otto Warburg
1936 - Otto Loewi
1944 - Joseph Erlanger
1944 - Herbert Spencer Gasser
1945 - Ernst Boris Chain
1946 - Hermann Joseph Muller
1950 - Tadeus Reichstein
1952 - Selman Abraham Waksman
1953 - Hans Krebs
1953 - Fritz Albert Lipmann
1958 - Joshua Lederberg
1959 - Arthur Kornberg
1964 - Konrad Bloch
1965 - Francois Jacob
1965 - Andre Lwoff
1967 - George Wald
1968 - Marshall W. Nirenberg
1969 - Salvador Luria
1970 - Julius Axelrod
1970 - Sir Bernard Katz
1972 - Gerald Maurice Edelman
1975 - Howard Martin Temin
1976 - Baruch S. Blumberg
1977 - Roselyn Sussman Yalow
1978 - Daniel Nathans
1980 - Baruj Benacerraf
1984 - Cesar Milstein
1985 - Michael Stuart Brown
1985 - Joseph L. Goldstein
1986 - Stanley Cohen [& Rita Levi-Montalcini]
1988 - Gertrude Elion
1989 - Harold Varmus
1991 - Erwin Neher
1991 - Bert Sakmann
1993 - Richard J. Roberts
1993 - Phillip Sharp
1994 - Alfred Gilman
1995 - Edward B. Lewis
1996- Lu RoseIacovino

TOTAL: 129!


The Jews are NOT promoting brain washing children in military training camps, teaching them how to blow themselves up and cause maximum deaths of Jews and other non Muslims. The Jews don't hijack planes, nor kill athletes at the Olympics, or blow themselves up in German restaurants. There is NOT one single Jew who has destroyed a church.. There is NOT a single Jew who protests by killing people.

The Jews don't traffic slaves, nor have leaders calling for Jihad and death to all the Infidels.

Perhaps the world's Muslims should consider investing more in standard education and less in blaming the Jews for all their problems.

Muslims must ask 'what can they do for humankind' before they demand that humankind respects them.

Regardless of your feelings about the crisis between Israel and the Palestinians and Arab neighbors, even if you believe there is more culpability on Israel 's part, the following two sentences really say it all:

'If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel ." Benjamin Netanyahu

General Eisenhower Warned Us 

It is a matter of history that when the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, General Dwight Eisenhower, found the victims of the death camps he ordered all possible photographs to be taken, and for the German people from surrounding villages to be ushered through the camps and even made to bury the dead.

He did this because he said in words to this effect:

'Get it all on record now - get the films - get the witnesses - because somewhere down the road of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened'

Recently, the UK debated whether to remove The Holocaust from its school curriculum because it 'offends' the Muslim population which claims it never occurred. It is not removed as yet. However, this is a frightening portent of the fear that is gripping the world and how easily each country is giving into it.

It is now more than 60 years after the Second World War in Europe ended. This e-mail is being sent as a memorial chain, in memory of the, 6 million Jews, 20 million Russians, 10 million Christians, and 1,900 Catholic priests who were 'murdered, raped, burned, starved, beaten, experimented on and humiliated' while many people looked the other way.

Now, more than ever, with Iran , among others, claiming the Holocaust to be 'a myth,' it is imperative to make sure the world never forgets.

How many years will it be before the attack on the World Trade Center 'NEVER HAPPENED' because it offends some Muslim in the United States?

************************

And now, for the best thoughts on this article, reprinted from PlancksConstant.org, first posted on 27 Feb 2006:

Ican tell a fake when I see one. Before I go into the details let me say that about 100 blogs in the past 6 months repeated the story below and a few like vodkapundit rightfully had qualms about its authenticity: 'With some reservations, I'm posting the translation in full. If it turns out this is a fake, let's steal a page from the MSM and call it "fake but accurate."'

Here is the post, usually prefaced by Written by Sebastian Vilar Rodrigez, Spanish Writer or "This is a translation of an article from a Spanish newspaper":

All European Life Died In Auschwitz

I walked down the street in Barcelona, and suddenly discovered a terrible truth – Europe died in Auschwitz. We killed six million Jews and replaced them with 20 million Muslims.

In Auschwitz we burned a culture, thought, creativity, talent. We destroyed the chosen people, truly chosen, because they produced great and wonderful people who changed the world. The contribution of this people is felt in all areas of life: science, art, international trade, and above all, as the conscience of the world. These are the people we burned.

And under the pretence of tolerance, and because we wanted to prove to ourselves that we were cured of the disease of racism, we opened our gates to 20 million Muslims, who brought us stupidity and ignorance, religious extremism and lack of tolerance, crime and poverty due to an unwillingness to work and support their families with pride.

They have turned our beautiful Spanish cities into the third world, drowning in filth and crime. Shut up in the apartments they receive free from the government, they plan the murder and destruction of their naïve hosts. And thus, in our misery, we have exchanged culture for fanatical hatred, creative skill for destructive skill, intelligence for backwardness and superstition.

We have exchanged the pursuit of peace of the Jews of Europe and their talent for hoping for a better future for their children, their determined clinging to life because life is holy, for those who pursue death, for people consumed by the desire for death for themselves and others, for our children and theirs.

What a terrible mistake was made by miserable Europe.

---

Here are a few problems.

1. The phrasing and syntax look like they were originally written in English but as if translated.
2. I disregard any post as true unless it gives me the name of the paper and date of publication.
3. Sebastian Vilar Rodrigez only exists in these posts.
4. And most importantly - there is no European Paper with the cojones [one can take a cojones test here] to actually publish anything this provocative against Muslims. Indeed Spain has been on a push to encourage Muslim immigration since 2004, see Jihadwatch.

As to "fake but accurate"; it is undoubtedly true that almost all the sentiments expressed in this "article" reflect the Muslim reality in Europe. It is too bad that no paper actually published it.

Update: The email stating that this appeared in a Spanish Newspaper is false. It did however appear on the rightwing, pro-Israel, anti-Communist, Spanish language website Gentiuno.

No doubt there will be those who protest the seemingly flagrant racism and I am equally certain that it will come mostly from liberal Jews who need to scratch the political correctness rash of theirs. I would call them fellow Jews but they are no different than Jews that deny the holocaust [yes they exist, Virginia]. They will rant that this is no different than the antisemitism of the Nazis.

One difference. The Nazis lied when they said Jews wanted to control the world. It is not racist to describe the truth. Perhaps a few months ago one could have posited the notion that it is a blatant, racist lie to say of Muslims that "they plan the murder and destruction of their naïve hosts" and that we have "exchanged culture for fanatical hatred, creative skill for destructive skill, intelligence for backwardness and superstition". But today, after the Danish Cartoon Affair, can anyone deny that this entire article indeed has the ring of truth?

As final proof of the truth of this article, go to any European and tell him a thousand Jews are coming into his city and he will say, "Great, and in what area are they going to invest?" Now change 'Jew' to 'Muslim' and the response would be "Crap, and what area are they going to destroy?"

***********************

In honor of Remembrance Day

Here's to more role models.

(What's Remembrance Day?)

Reasons Why I Homeschool: #15

A basic understanding of geology is already a part of their education. Guam doesn't float.



My apologies for the painful experience listening to that video . . . but the best part was the Marine officer's response: "We don't anticipate that . . . " His self-control far exceeded what I would have been able to maintain . . .

If you'd like to help, but don't know quite how . . .

If you'd like to help with the disaster efforts in Haiti, I would encourage you do to so.  Here are two ways you can:

1) Donate to the LDS Humanitarian Aid Fund.  100% of donations go to disaster relief, and we have one of the world's best track records in actually getting the supplies to those who need them.

2) Donate to Doctors Without Borders via the Yarn Harlot's Knitters Without Borders campaign.  I highly respect DWB and what they do, and if you're not comfortable donating to an organization with a religious affiliation, this is the one I recommend.

While I don't have TV/Cable, I understand that damage in Port au Prince is devastating.  Please, take a minute to think about something you could easily go without buying this next week or month, and then go make a donation.  The babies being born in Port au Prince, those who are just being found after days of entrapment in rubble, and countless others will be blessed by your small sacrifice.

I live such a blessed, easy, prosperous life.

And THAT's the Rest of the Story . . .

Curtis & Leroy saw an ad in the Starkville Daily News Newspaper in Starkville, MS and bought a mule for $100.  The farmer agreed to deliver the mule the next day.  The next morning the farmer drove up and said, "Sorry, fellows, I have some bad news, the mule died last night."

Curtis & Leroy replied, "Well, then just give us our money back."

The farmer said, "Can't do that. I went and spent it already."

They said, "OK then, just bring us the dead mule."

The farmer asked, "What in the world ya'll gonna do with a dead mule?"

Curtis said, "We gonna raffle him off."

The farmer said, "You can't raffle off a dead mule!"

Leroy said, "We shore can!  Heck, we don't hafta tell nobody he's dead!"

A couple of weeks later, the farmer ran into Curtis &Leroy at the Piggly Wiggly  grocery store and asked.  "What'd you fellers ever do with that dead mule?"

They said,"We raffled him off like we said we wuz gonna do."

Leroy said,"Shucks, we sold 500 tickets fer two dollars apiece and made a profit of $898."

The farmer said,"Good Heavens, didn't anyone complain?"

Curtis said, "Well, the feller who won got upset. So we gave him his two dollars back."

Curtis and Leroy now work for the government.

They're overseeing the Bailout Program.

Mommy, he's copying me!

I'm so tired of patent law and it's attendant disputes. Even though the concept is frightening to a lot of people, I think Benjamin Franklin was right in opposing patents.

Some of Chicago's Opinions

*~*~*~*~*~* Still working on the technical details of getting these photos to show. Ever since Gmail's right-click context menus quit on me, this has been a tricky business. Thanks for your patience! *~*~*~*~*~*

Here's another one of those emails . . . those who have visited will recognize the downtown area. Some of these posters are funny, some downright incendiary, others are fighting words. It's a clear indicator of how some of the people in Chicago feel about the new President's policy thusfar, especially as Chicago is fairly hard hit by all of the economic madness.




















































Voter's remorse. I wonder how many who voted for him now wish they hadn't. My dad was right . . . when my younger brother asked him what he thought of Obama, dad said: "If you ever want to make any money, you don't want to vote for him." I didn't vote for him, either . . . but am still stuck with him.

Most of the damage, economically speaking, has already been done. It now remains for us to watch and see how long it takes for the first few stones to bring down the whole snowy mountainside.

And thus we see, democracy can indeed be a tyranny of the majority.

One Trillion

(There. Again. Photos should appear now.  ;o)

This little gem appeared in my inbox today.  What a reality check.  And to think that more than seven trillion dollars have already been printed and handed out to banks already!  Oh boy.  Banana Republic ain't just a stop at the mall anymore.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

What Does one TRILLION dollars look like? All this talk about "stimulus packages" and "bailouts"...
A billion dollars...
A hundred billion dollars...
Eight hundred billion dollars...
One TRILLION dollars...
What does that look like? I mean, these various numbers are tossed around like so many doggie treats.  
Stay with me ... to get a sense of what a trillion dollars looks like.
Take it slowly....

We'll start with a $100 dollar bill. Currently the largest U.S. denomination in general circulation. Most everyone has seen them; slightly fewer have owned them. Guaranteed to make friends wherever they go.

A packet of one hundred $100 bills is less than 1/2" thick and contains $10,000. Fits in your pocket easily and is more than enough for a week or two of shamefully decadent fun.

Believe it or not, this next little pile is $1 million dollars (100 packets of $10,000). You could stuff that into a grocery bag and walk around with it.

While a measly $1 million looked a little unimpressive, $100 million is a little more respectable. It fits neatly on a standard pallet...

And $1 BILLION dollars... now we're really getting somewhere...

Next we'll look at ONE TRILLION dollars. This is that number we've been hearing about so much. What is a trillion dollars? Well, it's a million million. It's a thousand billion. It's a one followed by 12 zeros.

You ready for this?

It's pretty surprising.

Go ahead...

Scroll down...

Ladies and gentlemen... I give you $1 trillion dollars...

(And notice those pallets are double stacked and how small the man looks.)

So the next time you hear someone toss around the phrase "trillion dollars"... that's what they're talking about.

Make sure you pass this on so everyone can see how much our government is really spending!!   

It is happening here.

Jenni asked what the big deal was that I spoke of in an earlier post.  Long story short, there was a law passed, called the CPSIA (Children's Product Safety Improvement Act), monstrously voluminous and wide-sweeping.  It was passed quickly (too quickly for most congressfolk or senators to actually read it), and affects everyone and everything, basically. 

Read this, for example.  

And please tell me if you see a substantive difference between burning books and quietly forcing them to be hauled to a dumpter.  I can't see one, and it's chilling.

(Please do go on and read the comments.  There's more info down there . . . )

Hallelujah

It's not over yet, but we've been granted a reprieve.

And after reading part of the information after the voting section, I'm about to get rid of nearly ALL plastic toys.  (Legos must stay--there would be mutiny here if I tried to get rid of them.)

So, it's looking like I'll be sewing, knitting, and crocheting a LOT of toys in the near future. lol

Then again, Almanzo Wilder didn't have any toys at age 9.  He was too busy learning how to live a real life.  Hmmmm.

Now That's What I'm Talkin' About

It will be interesting to see how this unique economy handles the coming crunches and market corrections.

The Economy of Women

"The only way through, is through." --Gwen Bell

Did you say Snow?

And I was looking frward to a temperate winter . . . . this was issued after nearly a solid week of frigid temps and snow on the ground.

At least reading these to Vern lets me practice my "weatherman" voice. ;o) I could so totally be a news anchor. (Well, except for not being able to keep a straight face.)

Issued by The National Weather Service
Portland, OR
9:56 pm PST, Thu., Dec. 18, 2008

... WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY NOW IN EFFECT UNTIL 4 AM PST FRIDAY FOR THE GREATER PORTLAND AND VANCOUVER METRO AREA... ... WINTER STORM WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM SATURDAY MORNING THROUGH SUNDAY AFTERNOON FOR THE GREATER PORTLAND AND VANCOUVER METRO AREA...

THE WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY FOR SNOW IS NOW IN EFFECT UNTIL 4 AM PST FRIDAY. A WINTER STORM WATCH FOR SNOW... FREEZING RAIN... AND WIND REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM SATURDAY MORNING THROUGH SUNDAY AFTERNOON.

SNOW SHOWERS WILL CONTINUE ACROSS THE PORTLAND AND VANCOUVER METRO AREAS TONIGHT. SNOW ACCUMULATIONS ON THE VALLEY FLOOR WILL BE GENERALLY LESS THAN AN INCH EXCEPT ABOVE 500 FT WHERE 1 TO 2 INCHES OF NEW SNOW CAN BE EXPECTED. SNOW SHOWERS WILL BEGIN TO TAPER OFF EARLY FRIDAY MORNING.

ANOTHER SLOPPY FRONTAL SYSTEM WILL SPREAD A WINTRY MIX OF PRECIPITATION INTO THE METRO AREA BEGINNING SATURDAY AND CONTINUING THROUGH THE DAY SUNDAY. THIS STORM HAS THE POTENTIAL TO DROP SIGNIFICANT AMOUNTS OF SNOW OVER THE AREA. STILL QUITE A BIT OF UNCERTAINTY ON AMOUNTS... THOUGH 6 TO 12 INCHES SEEMS REASONABLE. IN ADDITION TO SNOWFALL... STRONG EAST WINDS SHOULD DEVELOP LATE SATURDAY INTO EARLY SUNDAY POSSIBLY CREATING HAZARDOUS BLOWING SNOW CONDITIONS ACROSS AREA ROADWAYS... AND POSSIBLY BLIZZARD CONDITIONS NEAR THE GORGE. AS WARMER AIR MOVES IN ALOFT... A TRANSITION TO FREEZING RAIN IS POSSIBLE BY EARLY SUNDAY... GIVING THE POSSIBILITY OF SIGNIFICANT ICE ACCUMULATION FOLLOWING THE SNOW. SLIGHT FLUCTUATIONS IN THE EXTENT OF THE WARM PUSH NORTHWARD WILL HAVE A SIGNIFICANT AFFECT ON SNOWFALL AND ICE ACCUMULATIONS.

A WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY FOR SNOW MEANS THAT PERIODS OF SNOW WILL CAUSE PRIMARILY TRAVEL DIFFICULTIES. BE PREPARED FOR SNOW COVERED ROADS AND LIMITED VISIBILITIES... AND USE CAUTION WHILE DRIVING.

A WINTER STORM WATCH MEANS THERE IS A POTENTIAL FOR SIGNIFICANT SNOW... SLEET... OR ICE ACCUMULATIONS THAT MAY IMPACT TRAVEL. CONTINUE TO MONITOR THE LATEST FORECASTS.

Photos to follow . . .

How Times Have Changed

Or have they?

Of Bees and Men

Today I've been thinking about bees. And people.

At lunch, my three-year-old son started talking about bees, and when they sting. So, we had a little conversation about bees, and when and why they sting. Honeybees rarely sting when they're away from the hive. (Unless you step on them. Trust me.) Some bees are more aggressive than others. For example, most of the kids* I know up here in the north have a healthy fear of bald-faced hornets; and nobody needs to ask why. Africanized honeybees, anyone?

*The adults feel the same way, but they call it "healthy respect" instead of fear.

Then I remembered, long ago, seeing some of the hostages walk across the tarmac, and asking my mother: "Why Americans?" I'll never forget her answer: "If they had chosen a building full of Palestinians, the people would have risen up and torn them limb from limb. Americans just don't fight back."

Columbine. Santana High School. Twenty seven school shootings since 1959. Twenty-two of those since 1983. Twenty of those since 1991. Ten of those since 2000. For Pete's sake, we even have a slang phrase for this kind of thing: "Going postal." Hasn't anyone noticed a theme here?

So what is the difference between bees and men? Why do people take proven precautions when handling bees, and yet go about their lives acting as though shootings just don't happen?

In 2002, there was a similar scenario at the Appalachian Law School in Virginia. It began much as the Virginia Tech Massacre did--but upon hearing gunfire, two students (unbeknownst to one another) ran to their cars and retrieved their own firearms. They subdued Peter Odighizuwa without firing a shot, and the total death toll that day was three. Less than one tenth of the Virginia Tech shooting. The death toll that day could have been down to two, had those students been carrying their "hardware" on their persons instead of locked in their cars. Angela Denise Dales could still be alive.

In the animal kingdom, few will dispute that survival of the fittest is the supreme law. As human beings, we hope for better than that. We strive for things like reason, kindness, respect, compassion, understanding, forgiveness and love. But there always have been, and always will be, human beings who choose to go back to animal status when they prey on their fellow man. Homo homini lupus est.*

As responsible adults, especially when we are responsible for children, it behooves us to consider these kinds of things. Deciding beforehand how you'll act in a given situation is the key to success. Instead of turning into a deer in the headlights, you can take action that can save your own life, and the lives of those around you. I remember learning of the Genealogical Library shooting in Salt Lake City, Utah, and wondering why nobody grabbed any one of the heavy or sharp objects in the library and went for the 70-year-old man who was wielding death that day.

I find the cries for lockdown policies cruel and cowardly. By locking down the building when a shooting begins, a death sentence is passed on those in the building with the madman. Sure, he can't shoot anybody outside the building, but those in the building have a very low chance of survival. Besides, having publicly announced lockdown policies is clearly an advantage to a shooter--and we don't want to give them advantages. We want to discourage them. Giving the criminal such a clear advantage is barbaric.

I'm not trying to say that everyone should walk around armed to the teeth. My message today is simply that we need to stop hiding our faces and pretending that nothing like this will ever happen again. As a society, we're following the path of victimization when we could be changing the way we think about violence, and our reaction to it. We need to rethink our panic response to the idea that good people can decide to take steps to protect themselves and those around them. If you're not one who feels comfortable with that, you are completely within your rights to abdicate that responsibility. But turning every single American into a helpless target only aids and encourages further violence. (I'm not going to go into how absurd it is to give Seung-Hui Cho air time on prime time for his video--c'mon, how much incentive do we want to give to budding lunatics? "Massacre a bunch of people and you, too, can be famous!")

I find it interesting that the schools handle misbehaving children in first grade by calling the police, who then arrest and book the child. The police told an interviewer that a six-year-old girl kicking a teacher is the same as an adult assaulting another adult. A frightening trend toward a zero tolerance policy with children, who are still learning what it means to be a good person, while showing compassion and leniency toward legal adults who have done horrific damage to so many lives, is outrageous. (C'mon . . . little Desre’e Watson's kick gets her put in jail for the day, and Seung-Hui Cho's massacre of 33, (with 29 injured), gets him time on TV. Who should be getting the sympathy here?)

Please, let's not let this insanity continue. If a child kicks a teacher, call her mother. Arrange for counseling. Give her a big hug and some quiet time one on one and talk the whole thing over. As a mother of small children, love is what truly works the best with little ones. If they love you, they'll trust you and try to do as you ask. If an adult uses deadly force, let us defend ourselves. These types have a trend of killing themselves in the end, so let's save some lives in the process, shall we?

Leniency and understanding for children.

Zero tolerance for adults.

*"Man is a wolf to man." Thomas Hobbes

Note: I have taken a lot of time and care in composing this. I welcome questions, comments and discussion. But please keep it respectful and free of foul language. This is a family-friendly blog. Thank you.

The world truly has gone mad.

Bonkers. Completely and totally insane.

6-year-olds Under Arrest

And people think I'm the crazy one for teaching them myself.

The Fourth Generation

So, Vern and I were talking today, and he told me about a review on The Fourth Turning by Howe and Strauss posted to PrudentSquirrel.com, edited by Chris Laird. It's a book about the four generation cycle that all civilizations throughout history seem to experience. From Laird:

That book describes how any society goes through four stages of development. The first is the survivor, creator generation. The second is the children of them, they continue and boost the creativity of the first sacrifice generation. The third is a consumption driven, flaccid generation. The fourth is the loser generation destined either for war or economic collapse, they are losers because they have none of the personal discipline that the first sacrificial and creative generation had.

As we discussed the book, and the further details you can read about the cycle at PrudentSquirrel, we looked at each other for a minute, and I said: "We're the fourth generation."

Quite a sobering thought. It will be interesting to see what yesterday's stock market drops have triggered, and what will happen next.