Sunday, August 28, 2005

Being Misunderstood

Could it be that many of us are misunderstood?
I know I am on many occasions. For instance, I am passionate about many things. I cannot stand to see children mistreated, and by that I mean not properly raised and disciplined as well as loved and fed. It rips my heart bloody to read of neglected and mistreated children. For the life of me, I can, because I have to, accept the reality that some people are evil enough to hurt children and teens; I will never understand how someone can take pleasure in doing so.
Because there are monsters in this world, I fully support punishment up to and including the death penalty mainly as a deterrent. I know that "research" says that the death penalty has no deterrent value, but it is a statement of who we are as a society. It deters at least one person: the perpetrator. I think it is a good thing to say that if you grievously harm a life that we are charged to protect, and who is not able to defend itself, then we as a society will prevent you from ever doing so again. Justice, swift and sure.
But I digress. My subject truly is passion and the concomitant result of expressing such passion in front of others. It seems that when you make a passionate stand for what you feel is right; you step on a lot of people’s toes. Said toes being attached to the feet of those who feel it is impolite to make a strong statement which others might find offensive. Here is the rub. People see me as hard hearted at times because I am passionate.
You see, I don’t care for excuses. Been there, done that. For me this all comes back to personal responsibility. I believe that teaching people personal responsibility for our deeds is part of being both just and compassionate. I am passionate about this. Some see me as hard nosed and hard hearted. I am far from that.
I heard a caller to a radio show the other day talk about a song of the 60's by Donovan called Universal Soldier, where he said there was a line that went something like, "if there were no soldiers who obeyed then without them, how would Hitler kill the people at Dachau?" The caller said this was his philosophy and why he felt that American Soldiers were war criminals.
What people some fail to recognize is this: They are singing these songs to the wrong army. Our soldiers would love to lay down their arms and come home. They are not the aggressors, they are the defenders. As long as there are bad guys in the world out there sawing the heads off people, raping and pillaging, we must respond. All violence is not equal. Violence in defense of one's self and ones country is both moral and justified.
If only this guy would go sing Donovan's song to the rapists, murderers, and Al-Quaida, and ask them to drop their aggression, then maybe we could all come home.

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