Confronting Radical Extremism, or The Curse of Interesting Times

Unfortunately, life is not all black and white, but varying shades of gray...with all shadings of color thrown in for people who aren't color blind. This holds true whether we’re dealing with the temper tantrums of our kids, the petty squabbles that infect most workplaces, or the life-and-death struggles that confront us around the world.

Many people seek to divide the world into pigeon-holes of “us” and “them.” This approach often finds spectacular success in the world of politics --- as well as any other form or marketing --- where the success of the “pitchman” often depends on striking resonant chords with his audience. But when we turn from the pettiness of our personal lives to the dangerous world around us, and “us” versus “them” seems to become a question of survival, our emotional reactions often trap us into a false dichotomy of choices: either waging total war, reflecting our instinct for survival, or a passive idealism that stems from our hopes for a better world than the one we find around us. Unfortunately, both approaches have flaws that prevent them from attaining our goals; and in the context of our current troubles with Muslim extremists throughout the world, we’ve seen both approaches lead us to grief.

Since survival is our most visceral instinct, any world defined by “us” and them” will lead us to seek “them” as the enemy; and a group feeling itself under attack will do whatever it takes to respond to the threat. It may be tempting to think in terms of all-out war, or expelling any member of "their" group to protect ourselves, but the modern world is more complex than the jungle our ancestors inhabited. In the end that approach betrays our ideals, and is something that will bring shame to us in the long run.

In the 1800s, we responded to raids on our settlements by some Indian tribes by (a) targeting all Indians, and (b) forcing them into the 19th Century equivalent of concentration camps. Ayone who has forgotten this sordid chapter of our past, need only read about our treatment of Black Kettle, including the massacre of the women and children of his tribe at Sand Creek, and the later massacre what was left of his tribe on the Washita River by Custer and his men to see what happens when you target whole groups, rather than those who mean you harm.

I don't think that the current schism between peaceful and radical elements of Islam is terribly different than the same schism between different elements of Christianity a few centuries ago. The only differences seem to be that one is occurring now while the other occurred in the dim, distant past, and that the West passed through the rationality of the Enlightenment Era, while the Middle East is still struggling to catch up.

I suppose we could simply treat them all as enemies, and wipe them from the face of the Earth. History, however, wouldn't be kind to us --- although, like the rabid Indian fighters of 150 years ago, we won't be around to hear it. And I don't think any of us would really want to be a part of that kind of war of extermination.

I think our "response", if it's to be that of civilized men and women, has to be to recognize that life is imperfect, and that while some people are evil, others are not. So, we resist evil --- and move to wipe it out where we can --- and try to do our best not to descend into barbarism. That's been the challenge facing Man ever since we evolved as a species, and we probably won't ever get it right. That doesn't mean we simply surrender to our coarser instincts and emotions; it means we learn from the past, try not to make the same mistakes, and keep trying.

Of course, this won't eliminate the problem: given the Era we're living through, we'll probably keep facing extremists, and hate-inspired killings and attacks will still go on. But if we wiped the Muslim world off the face of the Earth, we'd still face the same problems. We'd still have hatred; there would still be extremists who think that they have all the answers --- and that anyone who disagrees with them needs to be dealt with severely; and we'd still have lunatics massacring and killing innocents. It's part of the curse of the human race: as imperfect creatures, we're left to grope our way through life. But responding to lunatics by engaging in blood feuds is a tribal response, and will leave us at each others' throats forever. It may well be that our limitations as a species will eventually lead us back to that kind of life --- the life of the jungle --- but I'm not willing to give up my hopes for us yet. And it suggests that our proper course is to keep trying to distinguish our enemies from our potential friends...helping those with "civilized" instincts and behaviors resist and cope with the lunatics in their midst...and hoping that eventually we'll be able to overcome our barbaric instincts.

In the book The World Until Yesterday, Jared Diamond explores the difference between the modern, Western world and the tribal world that we came from. Among his insights is that while we've made remarkable strides, and our societies have evolved to perform what our ancestors would have regarded as miracles, we're basically the same people we've always been...but that what works for small-scale societies often doesn't work well for larger ones. I don't think we should allow what our emotional response would be to having someone we love murdered by fanatics guide us, since those responses would probably involve tearing the offenders limb from limb; while personal vengeance might work in a tribal setting, we need to have cooler heads, taking a longer view, deciding what to do. Otherwise, we never escape the cycle of violence, and we're left with no more than one of our feet sticking out of the jungle.

In the end, I think the approaches of both Bush and Obama were simplistic and naive: Bush's was naive in conception, and clumsy in execution; Obama's strives to take a broader perspective, but mistakes idealism for sophistication, and has been crippled by a lack of understanding of the real world around us. In the end, I think a targeted approach --- in identifying both the enemy, and our friends --- will prove more productive than lashing out blindly. But it will be neither easy nor pretty...since there are no easy answers, and all the pretty rhetoric in the world is no match for determined evil. And it's likely to take a century or so, before the current wave of fanaticism plays itself out...unless we simply decide to conquer the world and exterminate anyone who opposes us. But then, that will be even uglier, and leave us with a whole raft of other problems to deal with.

So, welcome to the 21st Century. It's likely to give renewed meaning to the ancient Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times."

JEFFREY CAMINSKY, a retired public prosecutor from Michigan, writes on a wide range of topics. His books include the Guardians of Peace-tm science fiction adventure series, The Sonnets of William Shakespeare, and the acclaimed Referee’s Survival Guide, a book on soccer officiating. All are published by New Alexandria Press, and are available on Amazon, as well as directly from the publisher.

Modern Fables: The Barber and the Cowboy

One day, a grizzled old cowboy walked into the local barbershop. Plopping himself down into the barber’s chair, he tossed his hat onto the hat rack by the door and aimed his wad of tobacco at the spittoon sitting on the floor beside his seat.

“What can I do for you today?” asked the barber, as he reached for his mop to clean the floor near the spittoon.

“Well, tarnation!” exclaimed the old timer. “Cain’t you see fer yerse’f? Been needin’ me a haircut these past cuppla weeks. An’ I ain’t had a decent shave in well nigh onto forever.”

“Is that so?” the barber replied. His cleanup finished, he flapped a (towel???) crisply, and laid it across the cowboys chest.

“I reckon my ol’ cheeks is too plumb wrinkled to get more’n half my whiskers off. So I’m consid’rin’ just gittin’ my hair cut from now on. And as fer the whiskers, why I’m all but decided to lettin’em fill out an’ be done with it.”

“Well,” said the barber, mulling over the problem as he trimmed the old man’s hair, “I think I have a solution. If you really want the shave, that is.”

“Well, that’s what I come fer.”

When he’d finished the haircut, the barber went to his shelf and returned with a handful of small marbles, which he gave the the old cowboy.

“What’s these fer?”

“Just put them inside your cheek and hold them there. They’ll spread out your skin, and it should eliminate those pesky wrinkles.”

The cowboy did as he was told and the barber went to work. Soon, the old cowboy was rubbing his cheek and marveling at the result. He spit out the marbles into a pot the barber gave him, and flashed a beaming smile at the handsome fellow staring back at him in the mirror.

“Dangnation, but if that isn’t the closest shave I’ve had in years!”
“I told you,” smiled the barber, whisking away his [barber bib] and leading his customer to the cash register. “It works every time.”

“Just one thing,” said the cowboy sheepishly, as reached for his wallet. “What happens if it turns out I done swallered a few of them little marbles?”

“Nothing to worry about,” the barber said blandly, as he rang up the sale. “Just eat plenty of fiber…then, in a few days, go on and rinse’em off and bring’em back. That’s what everyone else does.”

The moral of the story is:

It often pays to consider the matter from all angles before blindly swallowing whatever an expert hands you.

JEFFREY CAMINSKY, a retired public prosecutor from Michigan, writes on a wide range of topics. His books include the Guardians of Peace-tm science fiction adventure series, The Sonnets of William Shakespeare, and the acclaimed Referee’s Survival Guide, a book on soccer officiating. All are published by New Alexandria Press, and are available on Amazon, as well as directly from the publisher.

Modern Fables: The Pastor's Ass

One day the pastor of a small rural church saw a donkey staggering along the road leading into to town. The lost animal could barely walk and it looked starved, its ribs nearly poking through its sides. Taking pity on the poor creature, the Pastor brought it back to his church, where the nuns and children of the parish lovingly adopted the animal, and nursed it back to health. Soon it was romping freely around the grounds of the parish, delighting in giving rides to the children and relishing the attention it received from everyone.

A few weeks later, the Pastor watched the donkey as it raced from one end of the church grounds to the other, and was amazed at how fast the creature could run. And so the following week he entered the animal in the donkey race at the Town Fair. As he and his parishioners cheered him on, the donkey won easily, braying merrily at all the attention.

Everyone was so pleased that the next month, the Pastor entered the donkey in the race at the County Fair. Once again, their donkey easily beat all comers, and the following day an article in the local paper read: “PASTOR'S ASS BEATS ALL.”

Reading the paper over breakfast, the Bishop was so shocked that he sputtered coffee all over his tea and toast. By lunchtime, he’d become so upset with this kind of publicity that he ordered the Pastor not to enter the donkey the race at the State Fair. And so the next day the headline in the local paper read: “BISHOP SCRATCHES PASTOR’S ASS."

This was too much for the Bishop, so he ordered the Pastor to get rid of the donkey. Tearfully, the Pastor gave his beloved animal to a nun in a nearby convent. The local paper, hearing of the news, posted the following headline the next day: “NUN HAS BEST ASS IN TOWN.”

The Bishop fainted and, upon recovering, the Bishop ordered the nun to get rid of the donkey, and so she sold it to a farmer for the nominal sum of $1.

The next day the headline read: “NUN SELLS ASS FOR A DOLLAR.”

This was too much for the Bishop, and so he ordered the nun to buy back the donkey and lead it to the plains, where it could run to its heart’s content, and no longer be an embarrassment to the Church. And the next day the headline read: “NUN’S ASS NOW WILD AND FREE.”

The Bishop was buried the following day; and two days later, the donkey returned to its home in the parish, where it remains to this day.

The moral of the story is . . .

Being concerned about what everyone else thinks can bring you much grief and misery…and maybe even shorten your life.

So stop worrying about everyone else's ass: you’ll be a lot happier, and maybe live longer.

Just be yourself, and enjoy life.


JEFFREY CAMINSKY, a retired public prosecutor from Michigan, writes on a wide range of topics. His books include the Guardians of Peace-tm science fiction adventure series, The Sonnets of William Shakespeare, and the acclaimed Referee’s Survival Guide, a book on soccer officiating. All are published by New Alexandria Press, and are available on Amazon, as well as directly from the publisher.

Paving Materials on the Road to Hell

Recent tragedies in Connecticut and elsewhere, in which large numbers of innocent people were killed by deranged gunmen, have led to a flurry finger-pointing, as polticians of every stripe try to convince voters that they can solve the problems of gun violence in America, while looking for scapegoats to blame.

Predictably, some blame the gun lobby for its tone-deaf intransigience about setting rules and limits on guns; some blame the video-game industry for encouraging a culture of violence.  Some blame our existing gun restrictions, for preventing law-abiding citizens from coming to the rescue with guns blazing whenever there's trouble.  Some even blame our Constitution for elevating the "right to bear arms" to the level of a constitutional right --- or heap the blame on our Supreme Court, for recognizing in the text of the Second Amendment a personal right to bear arms for our own self-defense.

On this last score, some gun control advocates point to the pre-existing case law --- effectively acknowledging that the Second Amendment precluded only Congress from enacting limits on the right to bear arms --- to argue that the current court has made the "activist" decision to rewrite the Second Amendment, and pointing to the Supreme Court decision in McDonald v Chicago as Exhibit A.  The reason we had "a body of law" through the 1970s that has been revisited today is not because of "judicial activists" on the bench today, but because of the judicial activists of the 1960s.

From our founding until the middle of the 20th Century, the US Supreme Court had routinely held that the Bill of Rights applied only to restrict the power of the Federal government over its citizens...and had no application against the state. States, through their own laws and constitutions, were largely free to organize themselves, and to write whatever laws and rules their citizens saw fit to impose upon themselves. In this context, the Federal Government could impose no rules respecting weapons in the possession of its citizens of any kind --- with the possible exception of those being transported in across state lines, in interstate commerce. Any such rules and regulations were left to the states, which were free to impose any rules they wished.

Building upon various threads of developing legal thought, and beginning in earnest with the 1960 Supreme Court decision in Mapp v Ohio, the Supreme Court effectively rewrote our Constitution, extending protections designed to prevent tyranny at the Federal level by applying them to the states. Though largely intended at the start to rectify obvious injustices being visited on black defendants in the Deep South, this morphed into what is known as the "incorporation doctrine"...by which language in the Fourteenth Amendment --- which read that "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States" --- transformed the Bill of Rights into general limits on state power, a bit of legal alchemy that had somehow escaped the attention of jurists until the middle of the 20th Century. Though most modern liberals insist that it only applies to those "privileges or immunities" that they approve of --- such as the right to counsel, or the protection against unreasonable search and seizure (all of which were generally granted in one way or another in the various state constitutions) --- inexorable logic, as well as the law of unintended consequences, made it inevitable that the same "incorporation doctrine" would someday come to apply to the Second Amendment as well as the rest.

Today, rather than a system in which Washington is prohibited from disarming its citizens but States are free to regulate weapons as they see fit, we now have a system in which the same limit on Federal power relating to weapons is being applied against the states...with the result that what seemed a good idea to the "Perpetual Committee on Constitutional Revision" that the Supreme Court became in the 1960s is running into the reality that the Founders tried hard to accommodate in 1787: ie, the fact that a "one-size-fits-all" government is a recipe for disaster, and that liberty is better preserved by placing strict limits on Federal power, and letting the People govern themselves as much as possible at the state and local levels. In the context of trying to control gun violence in our society, this means that local communities across the country have to abide by the same constitutionally mandated limitations --- even though farmers in rural Montana and neighborhood watch volunteers in Detroit may face different local problems, requiring different local solutions.

If we are going to decry "judicial activists," we should probably begin by studying how the Constitution changed in the 1960s. We are still grappling with the consequences, but at least you'd have a sense of the nature of the problem...and why it's proving so hard to get things right: judges are terrible at crafting the kinds of political compromises we need to govern ourselves intelligently, and make most people happy with the result; and once they assumed the power to rewrite the Constitution, they became a third political branch of Government, rather than simply serving as the referees. And so therefore, in the context of our current debate on gun control, rather than being able to rule simply that "the Second Amendment does not apply to the States; therefore, the State of (fill in the blank) is free to regulate firearms in whatever manner its citizens seem fit," it now has to craft constitutional rules relating to firearms that apply across the board to everyone, everwhere in the country...and determining which state laws and regulations can pass muster with five members of the Supreme Court. Multiply that by the number of issues now deemed to involve someone's "constitutional rights," and you have a recipe for the chaos and dysfunction we see everywhere in this country, at all levels of government.

Personally, I think the Founders gave us a much better system; it's too bad we had to muck it up.

JEFFREY CAMINSKY, a retired public prosecutor from Michigan, writes on a wide range of topics. His books include the Guardians of Peace-tm science fiction adventure series, The Sonnets of William Shakespeare, and the acclaimed Referee’s Survival Guide, a book on soccer officiating. All are published by New Alexandria Press, and are available on Amazon, as well as directly from the publisher.

The Right to be Fools

Overprotective parents who insist on making all the decisions for their children merely ensure that their kids are unprepared for making wise decisions as adults.

Similarly, a nation that infantilizes its population, by having its Government start making all of the "hard" decisions for its people to keep them from making unwise choices, only ensures that within a generation or two it will be populated largely by nitwits --- of the same caliber as those who will thereafter be making all of the Government's decisions.

In a free society, it's not the Government's job to run our lives, determine how much money we should have, or to determine what kind of culture we have. In a free society, if the citizens insist on being fools --- or choose to value greed over civic-mindedness, selfishness over cooperation, or trivialities over substance --- there's nothing the Government can or should do to stop them. Liberty gives us the right to be foolish as well as wise...and in a free society, learning to tell the difference is part of what gives life its meaning.

On the other hand, if we want to see what it looks like to have a Government in charge of determining income levels --- or making people who "have too much" give their excess away --- or deciding how its citizens should run their own lives --- we saw quite a lot of that in the 20th Century. As I recall, it didn't turn out too well.

JEFFREY CAMINSKY, a retired public prosecutor from Michigan, writes on a wide range of topics. His books include the Guardians of Peace-tm science fiction adventure series, The Sonnets of William Shakespeare, and the acclaimed Referee’s Survival Guide, a book on soccer officiating. All are published by New Alexandria Press, and are available on Amazon, as well as directly from the publisher.

In Flanders Fields

We often take what we have for granted, overlooking the miracles that make our modern lives possible. Some of these miracles --- technology, for instance --- appear everywhere we look, from our cell phones, to our iPods, to our big-screen televisions and latest computers. Others call for reflection and remembrance, two things that modern life seems to be pushing out of more and more corners of our lives.

One miracle we rarely notice is the human capacity for sacrifice, whether it comes in the form of parents working quietly so that their children can have a better life, or of people dedicating their lives or careers in the service of others. And though for one day each year --- on Memorial Day --- we offer our thanks, most of us are more concerned about the fun we’ve planned for the three-day weekend than we are about the miracle that has given us our freedom. For it is truly a miracle that so many of us have been willing to offer up our own lives in order that others might enjoy the blessings of liberty. Nowhere is that sacrifice, and the folly that requires so much of it, revealed more starkly than on the battlefield, where young men have suffered and died defending their country, and those they love. And nowhere is the voice of the fallen presented more poignantly than in a short poem, written almost a century ago, by a man grieving over the death of a friend.

In the human nightmare we know as World War I, soldiers were routinely sacrificed by their commanders on the altar of outmoded tactics. One of the bloodiest battles of the war occurred in the Spring of 1915. Known as the Second Battle of Ypres, the battle marked the first use of poison gas on enemy soldiers by the Germans, and continued from late April until late May. It also marked the first time that the forces of a former European colony (Canada) ever defeated a European power (the German Empire) on European soil, in a portion of the battle fought near the Flemish town of St. Julien.

One of the Canadian soldiers in the battle was a physican from Guelph, Ontario named John McCrae. Though eligible for service behind the lines as part of the Medical Corps, he volunteered to serve on the front lines as a gunner and medical officer. During the fighting, which he described in letters home as a nightmare, with constant gunfire, surrounded by the dead and the dying, and filled with terror at the thought that the enemy might break through their lines. One of those killed in the battle was a close friend of his, named Alexis Helmer, whose death affected him greatly. Having developed an interest in poetry from a young age, and finding no other way to express his grief, he composed a poem the following day while sitting in an ambulance, having noticed the profusion of poppies that seemed to spring up around the graves of the dead.

Unsatisfied with his efforts, or perhaps consumed with grief, McCrae threw the poem away, only to have his fellow soldiers rescue the crumpled manuscript from when he had tossed it, and begged him to try to have it published. Rejected at first, it was finally released to the public in December 1915 by the British magazine Punch, a well-known publication that normally focused on satire and humor. An immediate sensation, the poem stands as a stark reminder that all men are mortal, and that behind any romantic talk of the glory and honor of combat lie death, and the horrors of war. Though the poem is often dismissed by academics as patriotic propaganda it has been translated widely, and is loved for the honesty of its emotion, the understated beauty of its imagery, and the ghostly shadows of the fallen, pleading not to be forgotten.

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie,

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

—Lt.Col. John McCrae

Though his words have left an enduring legacy of bravery and remembrance, McCrae never lived to see the end of the war. He died of pneumonia in January 1918, ironically while commanding a field hospital well to the rear of the fighting, an assignment he resented. His birthplace in Guelph is now a museum, memorial dedicated to his life and the War

JEFFREY CAMINSKY, a retired public prosecutor from Michigan, writes on a wide range of topics. His books include the science fiction adventure series,  The Guardians of Peace, The Sonnets of William Shakespeare, and the acclaimed Referee’s Survival Guide, a book on soccer officiating. All are published by New Alexandria Press, and are available on Amazon, as well as directly from the publisher.

RIP, JoePa

It's impossible to live in this world without experiencing sadness, or seeing tragedies unfolding before your eyes. In the case of Joe Paterno, his end came not with the adulation he richly deserved, but with a closing act marred by his ousting from the job he loved for dealing with the reported the crimes of another in a way that others rightly deemed legal but "inappropriate" --- and which he, himself, would have handled differently as a fifty-year old in command of all his faculties, instead of the aging giant he was when he he was confronted with the scandal.

At the end of my life I'd rather be judged and remembered for my accomplishments when I was in my prime, rather than for my failures as I reached my end. Forgotten in the search for scapegoats in this case was the fact that the real villain in the story of Paterno's Fall was the child molester, not the old man who actually followed the law, but lacked the mental acuity to follow through by himself.

The same can't be said for the assistant coach, and perhaps not for the whole rest of the PSU athletic establishment. But if the final ledger for Joe Paterno is the number of kids he helped, set against his failures, I think the net result is better than most fallible human beings ever manage, including those who were most vocal in calling for his scalp. And we would be better people to remember him as the living legend who inspired generations of athletes and students, rather than the fading old man he was at the end.

JEFFREY CAMINSKY, a retired public prosecutor from Michigan, writes on a wide range of topics. His books include the science fiction adventure novel Clouds of Darkness, the compelling third volume in the Guardians of Peace-tm series, The Sonnets of William Shakespeare, and the acclaimed Referee’s Survival Guide, a book on soccer officiating. All are published by New Alexandria Press, and are available on Amazon, as well as directly from the publisher.