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avevale_intelligencerToday people all over the world join together in commemorating the events of eleven years ago, when America lost the Twin Towers, and the question on everyone's lips is "how can we make sure this never happens again?"
Answer: you can't. You just can't. There will always be a nutter. As long as there is freedom, there will always be the rich, powerful nutter, or the nutter who can whip a mob into a frenzy, or the nutter who simply doesn't care as long as he can hurt someone. As long as there is freedom...
Of course, that's one thing you could do. You could raise up an army and kit it out with terrible weapons and send it forth to conquer and subdue, and you could defeat all the nations of the world and set your rule of law over them, and eradicate all the extremist religions behind which nutters hide (though you'd better have something equally extreme and fundamentalist ready to replace them, because "why can't we all get along?" isn't going to cut it). You could do that, you could wipe out freedom to enforce peace, and ensure that terrorism has no place to hide because you are everywhere. And then one day you might walk past a mirror, and casually glance that way, and freeze in shock as you realise that somehow, without your knowledge, it's happened again, and you did it.
No. There is no good way to make sure it can never happen again.
All you can do, all you should do, all you must do--all *we* must do--is to make sure WE never do it again.
Getting rid of our own nutters in chief would be a good first step.
EDIT BECAUSE I HAD TO GO OUT: and the other side of that coin is to ensure the continuance of freedom, self-determination, and a plurality of ideas. Not "no ideas." Not even "no ideas with which I disagree." Let people all over the world govern themselves and have their own ideas and their own beliefs, even if you think they're rubbish. And if we lead by example, if we be the change we want to see and refuse to tolerate our own nutters, and greedheads and scoundrels and paranoid hatemongers and fools, all of whom right now have far too easy routes to power, then perhaps the example will spread and other nations will pick up on the idea. And maybe then, some day, we'll walk past a window and glance out and realise that we are living, at last, in a world where this will probably not happen again just yet, and that we helped with that.
There's no other way.
Answer: you can't. You just can't. There will always be a nutter. As long as there is freedom, there will always be the rich, powerful nutter, or the nutter who can whip a mob into a frenzy, or the nutter who simply doesn't care as long as he can hurt someone. As long as there is freedom...
Of course, that's one thing you could do. You could raise up an army and kit it out with terrible weapons and send it forth to conquer and subdue, and you could defeat all the nations of the world and set your rule of law over them, and eradicate all the extremist religions behind which nutters hide (though you'd better have something equally extreme and fundamentalist ready to replace them, because "why can't we all get along?" isn't going to cut it). You could do that, you could wipe out freedom to enforce peace, and ensure that terrorism has no place to hide because you are everywhere. And then one day you might walk past a mirror, and casually glance that way, and freeze in shock as you realise that somehow, without your knowledge, it's happened again, and you did it.
No. There is no good way to make sure it can never happen again.
All you can do, all you should do, all you must do--all *we* must do--is to make sure WE never do it again.
Getting rid of our own nutters in chief would be a good first step.
EDIT BECAUSE I HAD TO GO OUT: and the other side of that coin is to ensure the continuance of freedom, self-determination, and a plurality of ideas. Not "no ideas." Not even "no ideas with which I disagree." Let people all over the world govern themselves and have their own ideas and their own beliefs, even if you think they're rubbish. And if we lead by example, if we be the change we want to see and refuse to tolerate our own nutters, and greedheads and scoundrels and paranoid hatemongers and fools, all of whom right now have far too easy routes to power, then perhaps the example will spread and other nations will pick up on the idea. And maybe then, some day, we'll walk past a window and glance out and realise that we are living, at last, in a world where this will probably not happen again just yet, and that we helped with that.
There's no other way.
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no subject
Date: 2012-09-11 11:44 am (UTC)Why is it that logic that is so simple in understanding can be so difficult to implement?
no subject
Date: 2012-09-11 11:54 am (UTC)Also, too, ensure that people are exposed to diversity, of skin tones and religions and sexual preferences and languages. Mix 'em up, encourage different sorts of people to live together and go to the same markets and use the same buses and have their kids in the same playgrounds and marry each other and teach each other what all their differences and similarities are. (I suppose that's me longwindedly echoing your "plurality of ideas", but I typed it, and so it stays :-)
no subject
Date: 2012-09-12 11:16 am (UTC)Toleration is a lovely thing. But (and I ask this seriously) would we (in the UK, the USA, or most other countries) tolerate a second Schikelgruber ??
no subject
Date: 2012-09-12 02:30 pm (UTC)Religious hatred is a very real and dangerous thing, inciting it is a particularly nasty kind of madness, and the consequences are never good.