[MD] Barbarian attack

[Platt Holden]

SA:

> Platt,
>      You said:  "I don't know how society can
> communicate with biology in terms of sex.  Perhaps you
> have in mind a group hug or possibly an orgy of some
> sort?  If you could describe the activities you
> imagine might communicate love and thus change the
> behavior of killers bent on our destruction, please
> let us know. The law of jungle has no respect for
> social values."
 
>      Activities:  Hospital, monasteries (thinking here
> about Tibetans praying for their killers the Chinese),
> the knowing of Love, not based in pure sexual desire,
> but a knowing of Love based in the community that
> nurtures its' neighbors and does not kill them.

OK. This is the Christian doctrine--love thy enemy, turn the other 
cheek--a religious social value. You reference to biological sex threw 
me off. You are aware I'm sure that radical Muslims take pleasure in 
biologically slaughtering Christians as well as Jews. In their eyes, 
both are infidels who must be eliminated. 

>      As for changing the behavior of killers bent on
> our destruction and the law of the jungle:  well, this
> is where I think Gandhi steps in, Martin Luther King
> Jr. steps in, the peaceful intentions of the
> Mississippian Amerindian cultures who gained sympathy
> by the United States common population until the
> future president William Harrison tricked the
> perception of the U.S. population into thinking the
> Prophets Village was aggressive, the Tibetan monks
> (mentioned above), on and on common people who did not
> fight, yet, against the law of the jungle when total
> destruction seems to be flying in the face of all
> humanity - well all I have to say is God help us!!! 

I don't know about William Harrison and the Prophets Village (perhaps 
you will explain further), but the non-violent tactics of King and 
Ghandi were used successfully where Western intellectual values of 
individual equality under the law were already well established. Had 
those same tactics been tried against the social values of Nazism or 
Communism where advancement of the state, not the individual, was  
predominant, few believe non-violence would have succeeded in saving 
the Jews from the ovens of Dachau or dissidents from the gulags of 
Siberia. Today we are faced with religious fanaticism that is equally 
bent on destruction of our intellectual values of democracy, equality, 
free speech, trial by jury, etc.    

> Because war is not the answer.  War is war.  Peace is
> Peace.  War is violent.  Peace is not violent.  War
> may try to make peace, but what is somebody doing 
> while they are making war - well simply they are
> fighting and not enacting peace!!!  So were is the
> peace.  Some of the world is caught up in a whirl wind
> of violence thinking by killing they are not killing -
> that is very confusing.

In some cases, war has been the answer in defending and preserving 
intellectual values. Our own revolutionary was for example, not to 
mention our Civil War,  World War II and the Cold War. I hate to think 
what the world would be like today if Hitler, Tojo, Stalin, Krushchev, 
Mao, Pol Pot, Castro and company had prevailed. Our superior force of 
arms, the sacrifice of thousands of young men and women, and the wisdom 
of a few courageous leaders, prevented such a catastrophe.

> Yet, knowing all that I said - if somebody came to my
> family to hurt them.  I would punch them right in the
> face.  Weird isn't it.  I also take ju-jitsu.  Maybe I
> don't have the strong community bond that brings
> societies to fight societies.  I think once fighting
> has reached the level of the larger society then the
> intent to be peaceful, which begins on the individual
> level, has not been a strong enough intent for peace
> in the first place by the individuals involved.  I am
> still trying to intend peace.
 
Most want peace. But there are those in the Muslim world who don't and 
who have declared an "Intifada" (uprising) against the intellectual 
values we cherish. Unfortunately, they have millions of supporters, as 
the riots and killings over a cartoon in many parts of the Muslim world 
amply demonstrate. If such radicals get their hands on WMD as they 
clearly intend to, the threat to us in the West becomes something very 
few want to face up to.  

Platt