Why Don't We Stop Lying to Our Children?

Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely.

This is a quote from the words of John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, first Baron Acton (1834–1902). The historian and moralist, who was otherwise known simply as Lord Acton, expressed this opinion in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887:
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."

He said a mouthful.

How often have we seen this proven in the pages of history? Answer: too often. What to do? A discussion broke out (I think an apt description of how discussions tend to start these days) over deposing corrupt leaders. Someone asked how we'd feel if someone from another country wanted to depose ours. Heh. Apples and oranges. You see, we can depose our own. It's called an ELECTION. People in countries like Libya don't have that handy opportunity. The problem here is that we don't necessarily recognize when there's a problem and we don't use our opportunity for change to our own benefit. We sit dumbly by while our trust is abused. We call 53% a "good" voting turnout. We are a rather apathetic society, to put it mildly. Ah, but, I digress.

Gaddafi took over Libya by military coup and has had absolute power over the Libyan people for over 40 years. He is corrupt, to say the least. He has been, to some degree, controlled by other powers by virtue of sanctions and threats over this time. But he has always had an ace up his sleeve: oil, the main commodity of Libya and something the rest of us want. And so, despite the disdain of many nations and world leaders, he has remained in power, at times teetering on the brink of pushing others too far. But this is a man who regularly slips in sh!t, then gets up smelling like roses, because better the devil you know, than the devil you don't.

Perhaps his most notorious slip was his connection to the terrorist bombing of an airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988. He escaped virtually unscathed from that by later denouncing terrorist activities. A few men were prosecuted; one was jailed, then released in 2009 on humanitarian grounds. The families of the victims? Well, tough luck, I guess.

While all this teetering and gesturing was going on, where was the UN? Now, don't get me wrong ~ this league of civilized nations has been a great forum to hear world concerns of all kinds from many concerned people over the years. And they have done great things for the children of the world. But the fact is, it is a gathering of responsible nations that lacks any muscle when it comes to dealing with political corruption and horrendous violations of human rights. It's great to speak to higher ideals, but rhetoric didn't stop the genocide in Rwanda, the horrors in Darfur, "ethnic cleansing" in Bosnia~Herzegovina, etc., etc. And the nations of the UN spent a lot of time hemming and hawing while Gaddafi murdered his own people.

I don't like war. I don't like violence. I don't like bullies. Do you?

Many of us in western countries try to teach our children that violence isn't justifiable. We discourage our kids from fighting in the school yard to resolve conflicts. And we are discouraged from using corporal punishment on our kids, the way our parents did. Violence, we are told, is not the way to solve problems. There is a big campaign on now to stop bullying, because it just isn't right.

And yet, our kids are bullied, and many of the ones who do survive the school yard no sooner get through puberty than they're decked out in spiffy uniforms and handed automatic weapons to go off to other countries to resolve political conflicts by violence, by killing, by getting killed. Huh? But wait....

Moreover, political bullying isn't at all frowned upon either, apparently. I mean, look at the leader of my country, Canada. His name is Stephen Harper and he routinely launches personal attacks on the opposition on national television. No, he's not just attacking policy and political platform, his ATTACKS are personal, against Ignatieff in particular ~ his personal history, his motives for entering Canadian politics, and more. This is not political campaigning, it's bullying! Harper is also a fear-monger, threatening Canadians with all sorts of supposedly dire political consequences if we don't vote for him. Are Canadians falling for these tactics? Heh... I don't see any uprising here. Canadians do have a means of deposing our bully: an election. But do Canadians care? It remains to be seen, but I have my doubts.

Gaddafi is killing his own people. In fact, he has pledged to kill anyone who continues to oppose him. (Yes, this is more extreme than Harper's tactics, but it's the same genre of sh!t. The only difference is that Harper does not have absolute power. Something I wouldn't trust him with for even a minute.) So finally the UN decides to step in. A bit late. I mean, by this time there is no diplomatic or economic means of influencing change in Libya.

It's war. It's violence. It's killing to stop killing.

So why don't we just stop lying to our children? Violence is the way we resolve conflict, and bullying is the way we influence people. It's really mean-spirited to lead our kids to believe some higher ideal is possible, when it plainly isn't. We are all just big liars ~ politicians, educators, parents... all of us. We should just let our children duke it out in the school yard to settle arguments. This will prepare them for the real world. We should just sit idly by while the meanest, toughest kids take over the school yard and all the other kids have to bow to their whims to get through the day.

Ideals are nice, but we don't have the stuff to make them real. Corruption, violence and bullying is the real world.

Eh? Did you say something? Really? Did you vote in the last election? You're bloody lucky if you have that recourse. Do you bother? Or do you just lie to your children?

This is Will

Handsome, freckle-faced, almost always smiling, talented, youthful. He’ll always be youthful. Will played the fiddle, piano, wind instruments. He loved music. Seems whatever instrument he attempted he could play. His talent was just natural. Will’s dad and uncle were in the army, so when his country became embroiled in a conflict, Will wanted to join the army too. Problem was, he was only 17. That was too young. But Will was determined, so he ran away and tried to join under an assumed name by lying about his age. He was caught, fortunately, and returned home.

But his mom was frightened. She worried about him running away again and maybe getting away with joining up under another name, and then, if something bad happened, she might never know what became of him. He really wanted to join up, so she signed her permission on the condition that he was admitted to the bugle corp, which was supposed to be kept behind the lines.

And so he went. Wounded in France, he was transferred to an army hospital in England. He was able to send a few letters to his mom with the help of the nurses there. The mayor of a city near his home heard about him and raised money to send his mom overseas to be with him. But even as she packed for the trip, she received news that Will had succumbed to his injuries.

I don’t like war. I guess no one really does, except maybe despots and power mongers. We now try to teach our kids that problems aren’t solved with violence. We discourage them from fighting for things in the school yard, in the back yard, or anywhere. We don’t even let Mom and Dad whack the kids anymore, because corporal discipline is no way to properly raise a child. Even the measured blow of a loving parent on the bum to make a point is a no-no.... because violence doesn’t solve anything. And yet, in amazingly hypocritical governmental policy for dealing with other countries and their policies, we still send young people to war to fight and die for political reasons.

Will died in the “war to end all wars,” or the first world war. He was a bugler with a Canadian drum and bugle corp and was wounded in the head with a piece of shrapnel in a small town in France. He was 17 and ½ years old when he died. He is buried in a military cemetery in England. If he had not been killed in a war, who knows what innovation to style, recording or instrumentation this young man might have contributed to the music industry? And perhaps if he’d had kids, one of them might have inherited his talent and made great strides in music too.

Will was my uncle. I never knew him. Hell, my mom, who was his sister, never knew him. I have his fiddle. On Remembrance Day (Veterans' Day in the U.S.) I will remember my Uncle Will who went overseas to help in the political struggle that was supposed to end conflict. And I will salute my dad, who probably died younger than he should have because he went overseas in the big war after that ~ for four years. I don’t like that we are so primitive as a species that we still have wars, but despite what we tell our children, we still do. So on November 11th I will pay homage to the sacrifices of the men and women who have given so much to preserve our freedoms. I do this not just because of their sacrifice, but because of ours. Yes, we have freedoms for which I am grateful. But I can’t help wondering how different, how much better, our world and our way of life might have been if all those vibrant, talented young people who gave their lives in conflict, hadn’t had to.

Imagine. Just imagine.