Saturday, October 14, 2006

Mixed Emotions With The Raspberry Vinegarette, Please

There's an odd dissonance in these two stories yet, in the end, they are related somehow.

Go read them and hurry back.

SEAL falls on grenade to save comrades

Texas school tells classes to fight back


My reactions are manifold. I am awed by the sacrifice by the young SEAL who was doing the thing he was trained to do. He sacrificed himself to save the unit. I am also apalled that our best and brightest are being pissed away in Iraq. I wonder if training 14 year-olds to make the same decisions under fire is a good thing.

I understand the pioneering spirit that built this country. I also understand that the same spirit caused a lot of heartache for those who stood in the way. One of the first things a town wishing to be "civilized" did was to hire a lawman. The second was to start churches and schools. These were the civilizing institutions which separated us from the "savages" and the lawless. Now there are those among us anxiously backsliding to the late 19th Century.

I'm not offering glib solutions here or pointing fingers. This post is just to share my mixed emotions; admiration, disgust, despair, hope. I just wonder what crooked path we are being led down and when we, as a civilized society, will decide together that it's time to find another way.

Discuss.

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