[GCFL-discuss] Tearjerker story

[gcfl-discuss at gcfl.net]

That's a beautiful story.

I had a friend once, a very close co-worker, who used to settle any
argument not going their way by throwing out an analogy. Since the first
half is obvious, therefore if I compare the obvious conclusion to
whatever we are arguing about, I must be right and you must be wrong. The
facts we were discussing are of no consequence. 

I could rewrite that story to make it a LITTLE more like real life...
Suppose mommy and daddy are NOT in charge of your house, there is a
landlord upstairs who owns everything. Suppose that bad man across the
street got to live in the house in the first place because the landlord
upstairs played tricks on the previous owner, and thought the bad man
would be a more convenient neighbor. Then the landlord and the bad man
fell out over some neighborhood quarrel. The bad man beat his wife and
killed his children when he and the landlord were friends, but because he
helped the landlord beat up some rivals down the block, nobody
bothered...

Finally, suppose when the landlord fell out with the bad man, he told you
to throw bombs into the man's house, which knocked the place half to
pieces, killed some more of the man's wives and children, and when you
got the bad man out, a whole gang of thieves he was hiding in his
basement took over the house, and some other thieves from another
neighborhood came in to join them, but there were some nice people living
in the house also... and even the nice people didn't really like or
appreciate you coming into THEIR yard, or at least they wanted you out
now that the bad man was in jail...

It would take forever to straighten this out. Parents will always try to
instill in their children whatever values the parents believe. That is
their prerogative. But this story bears little or no resemblance to Iraq,
the U.S., the U.N., or President Bush. It just doesn't. Yards are not
nations. Little boys are not presidents -- although the president does
act like a spoiled little boy most of the time.

I have a few alternate favorite slogans:

God Bless America! With a new president.

Support our troops! Give them a commander in chief with front line combat
experience.

and remember, the liberty we prize cannot be GIVEN to anyone, each
person, family, neighborhood, tribe, clan, nation, people, must take it
FOR THEMSELVES. We got into Vietnam because President Eisenhower knew
that if a free election were held there, the guy we didn't want would
have got 80% of the vote. Liberty IMPOSED on people who DON'T WANT
exactly what WE DREAM OF FOR THEM is not liberty at all. And if their
choice is not what we would have chosen for them, then we naturally feel
they are ungrateful for the sacrifices we did make in good faith for
them.

We do have an enemy that attacked us in our own cities and airports. That
enemy was not based in Iraq. It is still at large in the world today.
Many of our initial efforts to contain and eliminate that enemy are
coming undone, because our armed forces are stretched thin in a
bewildering maze of human desires that don't conform to what we wanted to
believe we could do in a country that wasn't really the source of the
direct attack on us.

Siarlys


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