The Right Way to Protect Schools

The last few years have seen several incidents in which one or two men have undertaken violence at schools. They typically put on paramilitary garb and bring enough weaponry to terrorize the entire school. Many large school districts have metal detectors in high schools, but a metal detector is useless against someone who comes in with no intention of surrendering his weapon. Aside from militarizing the schools, protecting schoolchildren while they learn seems to be a difficult task. Doing so while maintaining a positive learning atmosphere seems especially daunting.

Well, a new method to combat the violence comes from the Burleson, Texas school district.

BURLESON — Hoping to stiffen its defense against intruders, the Burleson school district is training students and teachers to fight back with everything from books to scissors.

The "critical incident response" training for teachers and students instructs them to disrupt attackers by barraging them with classroom supplies, officials said.

"Crawling under a table and hoping and waiting for rescue is not a recipe for survival," Greg Crane, an incident response trainer, said in a report by Dallas-Fort Worth television station KTVT.

Crane's wife, school principal Lisa Crane, adds, "Do we need to put armies in schools? I have a small army here." 600 teachers have received training in how to fight back, including using any means possilble to distract and harass the attacker.

Hopefully one of the components of such training would be to tell students that in an emergency situation, as in every situation, they have the choice to act or not to act. If they choose not to act, they are putting their fate in the hands of someone with proven disregard for their safety. If they choose to act, the power is theirs. As Blonde Sagacity put it, "I think it's incredibly empowering for the children - especially in light of the stress that current events have placed on them.".

There may be some parents who fear training kids to fight back will increase their child's likelihood of being harmed in a school attack. I think recent history has shown us that killers love attacking schools precisely because they expect little resistance.

When that bad man attacked the Amish school, I thought, "What if that teacher had a gun? Would those kids be alive today?" But I think the real question is, "What if those kids had all rushed and attacked the attacker?" If he had known they would do that, would he have attacked them?

It is perhaps the most firmly entrenched right, the right of self-defense. It's about time we taught our kids the proper way to exercise that right.

Next time there is a school shooting, just remember that the attacker was expecting an easy victim. You can bet he won't find one in Burleson, Texas.

(original story and another link)

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Where were you?

Like many, I remember precisely where I was. My wife and I were driving toward Indianapolis, across the rolling Indiana countryside. It was a bright Tuesday morning. We had the Christian music station from Champaign/Terra Haute on the radio. They broke in with the news.

A large airplane had struck the World Trade Center. In New York City, billowing smoke could be seen for miles. There was no word as yet whether the crash was an accident, yet I knew immediately that it was not. They went back to music.

New York is a big city: what were the odds of an airplane accidentally hitting the World Trade Center? Roughly zero. There were two towers. "There will be another plane, and it will hit the other tower," I told my wife.

No sooner had I said that than the news came that the South tower had been struck, and also the Pentagon. I pulled over to the side of the Interstate to pray. And now we come to the point of this story.

Before I got to the side of the road, Meredith Foster, then one of the morning voices at WBGL radio interrupted the newscast for a prayer. She asked God to intercede, that "the plans of the enemy be thwarted". It was chilling, moving, and inspiring: we would take the offensive.

After her prayer, and one of our own, I pulled back into traffic. I noticed in the sky perhaps a dozen jets, all converging on Indianapolis. Some were only contrails, others were clearly commercial passenger jets. The thought occurred to me that they were attacking Indianapolis, but the news said the FAA had ordered all planes grounded. All planes: it had never been done before. This was a bold move, one designed to thwart the plans of the enemy.

We heard later of a crash in Pennsylvania.

I don't know if Meredith offered her prayer before the FAA grounded the planes, or before the men of Flight 93 took steps to thwart the plans of the enemy. But I do know that her words set the tone for the rest of the day for me. Thank you, Meredith.

We went on to Indy, for a medical procedure that was made to seem trivial by the events of the day. Afterward, we stopped in to the Cathedral, even though we weren't practicing Catholics at the time. It seemed like the place to be. It was. The mass lacked Meredith's call to action, but it carried a peace and sense of unity that I still feel. We are one in Christ.

As we walked around Indianapolis, there was a subdued tone everywhere. No horns honked, no profanity arose from the drivers of delivery vans. The local newspaper printed a special edition with the banner headline "Terror!". They were giving it away, rather than selling it.

Toward afternoon, we started home. Some gas stations had begun raising prices, some as high as (a shocking) $3.00 per gallon. A lot of rancor was raised in the days following, outrage at the stations for "gouging". But the "gouging" was in response to people instinctively topping off their tanks: who knew what would be next? Were we at war? While some may have engaged in opportunism, it seemed to me that the stations were trying to retain their supply as best they could, with the only tool at their disposal, aside from closing: raising prices.

The strange thing was that though people were lined up at the gas pump in ostensible panic, there was a sense of calm. People were going out of their way to be polite and kind to one another. Each one insisted that the others have access to the pump first, so it hardly mattered who was up next. It just seemed the right way to act on that day.

That sense of calm, of unity, of peace and patriotism lasted long after that day. I still feel it now and then. And it all started with one woman's prayer.

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We're winning the wrong war

To say that much has been written about the Global War on Terror would be to make something of an understatement. A lot of what has been written -- that we're losing the war, that our prosecution of it is what causes it to continue, and that Iraq is not part of it -- has been balderdash driven by political agendai.

But we miss the mark also in thinking that we are winning, that our prosecution of it vectors us directly toward victory, and that our best place to be is Iraq. It's true that we are slowly winning the Global War on Terror. It's true that winning in Iraq will aid us in winning the GWOT. And it's true that we need to finish the job in Iraq. But none of those things matter.

We shouldn't be fighting terror. We should be fighting against jihad.

John F. Lehman piece in WaPo Friday (h/t Eric at Classical Values) starts:

Are we winning the war? The first question to ask is, what war? The Bush administration continues to muddle a national understanding of the conflict we are in by calling it the "war on terror." This political correctness presumably seeks to avoid hurting the feelings of the Saudis and other Muslims, but it comes at high cost. This not a war against terror any more than World War II was a war against kamikazes.

We are at war with jihadists motivated by a violent ideology based on an extremist interpretation of the Islamic faith. This enemy is decentralized and geographically dispersed around the world. Its organizations range from a fully functioning state such as Iran to small groups of individuals in American cities.

We have been so conditioned to react negatively to singling out any religion that when a religion has as its goal the assimilation and dessication of our civilization, we cannot accept that reality. We think we must be reacting out of some kind of racist or parochial mindset that we haven't yet rooted out of our thinking. It must be our thinking that is wrong. People are like us; they just want the things we want.

But reality has a way of intruding on our desires. On 9/11/2001 we learned that the "isolated" attacks by Muslim groups against US and non-Muslim targets were part of a pattern, a worldwide struggle of one religion against all the others and for political, religious, cultural, and social control of the entire world. Terrorism is merely their current weapon of choice.

We fight terrorism because terrorism happened on 9/11, but what caused the terrorism? Jihad.

Will we defeat our foes by fighting terrorism? No. Terrorism is their weapon of choice because they lack a military machine large enough to defeat us on our terms. Denied terrorism somehow, they would find other methods, such as the use of conventional military, oil-funded propaganda, or state-supported nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction to achieve their goal of worldwide domination. Even if we convince them somehow that terrorism is not going to work, they will find other weapons to continue their "struggle". It's in their book.

Terrorism will always be with us. As long as there are people who hate other people, which is to say, as long as there are people, there will be those who will use violence against civilians to achieve political ends. We can't defeat terrorism even by conquering the whole world, a strategy from which we would recoil.

In order to defeat even Islamic terrorism, we have to defeat the very idea of jihad. I don't know how to do that without wiping out every Muslim, a tactic from which we recoil with even greater horror.

But I do know that pretending jihad isn't a problem won't make it go away.

(Cross-posted at Redstate.com)

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Evil Recognized

How can we recognize the particular kind of evil among our enemies that is not merely totalitarian, but imperialist as well? Let us ignore the generalizations about physical attractiveness, stature, and certain other anatomical shortcomings, for which pop psychology posits that they compensate with the accumulation of personal power.

For those trite observations are of little help in spotting the next Alexander, Napoleon or Hitler, and distinguishing him from the next Amin, Hussein, Stalin or Mao. While all of those men were capable of great evil, there is an important distinction to be made between classes of despots: those overgrown thugs who are content to rule their homelands with an iron fist, and those more visionary villains who wield dictatorial power not for its own sake, but as a means to establish a base for imperialism.

How do we recognize the truly dangerous, and what can we do to stop it?

There has developed, at least in the West, a sense that there are no more Hitlers. There is even a popular pseudo-Latin phrase embodying the belief: reductio ad hitlerum, and Godwin's Law. Reductio ad hitlerum is a logical fallacy in which something is declared evil because Hitler or the German National Socialist Party advocated it. Godwin's Law says that sooner or later, all online discussions devolve to Reductio ad hitlerum. Common Internet culture says that the one using the fallacy loses the debate, but that is only so because further discussion with someone using the tactic is seen not to be fruitful. And so, many will dismiss my arguments here as a premature Hitler invocation.

But there is a remarkable difference between the two kinds of dictators, the thugs and the emperors. The thugs are focused inward, on not losing the base of power they have achieved. The emperors are unsatisfied with the conquest of one nation, and want to extend their rule to the entire human race. Imperialists tend to use religion as a rallying point. While there is some overlap, and a thug may eventually develop aspirations to conquer more territory, the principle seems clear:

The broader the base an autocrat has in his own country, the more likely he is to want to expand.

I ran across a chilling quote a while back. But first, here is a quote from Ahmadinjejad:

The brave and faithful people of Iran too have many questions and grievances, including: the coup d'etat of 1953 and the subsequent toppling of the legal government of the day, opposition to the Islamic revolution, transformation of an Embassy into a headquarters supporting the activities of those opposing the Islamic Republic (many thousands of pages of documents corroborate this claim), support for Saddam in the war waged against Iran, the shooting down of the Iranian passenger plane, freezing the assets of the Iranian nation, increasing threats, anger and displeasure vis-a-vis the scientific and nuclear progress of the Iranian nation (just when all Iranians are jubilant and celebrating their country's progress), and many other grievances that I will not refer to in this letter.

And here is the chiling quote:

After the renewed refusal of my peaceoffer in January 1940 by the then British Prime Minister and the clique which supported or else dominated him, it became clear that this war-against all reasons of common, sense and necessity-must be fought to its end. You know me, my old Party companions: you know I have always been an enemy of half measures or weak decisions. If the
Providence has so willed that the German people cannot be spared this fight, then I can only be grateful that it entrusted me with the leadership in this historic struggle which, for the next 500 or 1,000 years, will be described as decisive, not only for the history of Germany, but for the whole of Europe and indeed the whole world. The German people and their soldiers are working and fighting today, not only for the present, but for the coming, nay the most distant, generations. A historical revision on a unique scale has been imposed on us by the Creator.

That was. of course, Adolph Hitler, courtesy the Jewish Virtual Library.

Can we recognize the Evil One yet? It seems clear that Ahmadinejad's grip on his own country, and his hatred for Jews, is similar to that of Hitler. We'll probably only know for sure by losing Tel Aviv.

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Unity

We all have heard the admonitions against the admixture of religion and politics into polite conversation. The turbulence of religious or political discussions can turn into arguments, and the arguments can soon take a quiet family reunion or dinner party to the brink of civil war.

There is an undernourished principle, the importance of which can be seen by ignoring it: whether in matters of faith or polity, disharmony causes those outside the disharmonious sphere to look into it with disfavor, and those inside it to lose their energy.

Hear, then, this call for Unity.

The faith and beliefs about government of many or most people are a single body of principles, greatly diminishing the possibility of tearing us away from our convictions about either. Politics and religion not only have these areas of commonality, but they are truly inseparable and often indistinguishable. Faith tells us how we ought to live; politics is how we get others to do the same, either by force of persuasion or force of law.

For many people, political activism for their causes takes on a religious role in their lives. It gives their lives meaning and makes them feel part of a larger whole in the way that religion does. They may also believe that their lives have more than a temporary impact, by leaving behind the aftereffects of the policies they attempt to implement.

For other people, conformity to the values of their religion requires them to have certain political views, and to be active with them. Taking action displays their faith to themselves and others, because our values are shown by what we do.

Religious views become mixed up with political ones, to a greater or lesser extent. Religious values say that saving life is Good, that helping the poor is Good, that chastity is Good, or that being kind to other species is Good. Adherents then are prone to wanting those Good things put into law, or at least to have their government support their practice. And it is an affront to them for their government to fund things with which they disagree.

Like numbers brought to life, people see themselves as having a "right" or "left" sign. They belong to one side or the other, and think they have to conform to all of the beliefs associated with that side. The religious overtones for certain issues bring religious conformity to bear.

But one thing is certain: separating religion from politics is a fool's errand. Calls for the separation of Church and State notwithstanding, few people can separate their deepest held beliefs from their opinion about governance -- and even fewer of those who do can be trusted. Trustworthy people are only found among those whose inmost beliefs (whatever they may be) are reflected in all phases of their lives.

But people of good conscience can disagree on the best way to dot an "i" or on fundamental issues. What we do with those disagreements depends on their centrality to our objectives. If we believe that the other's positive value to our side is outweighed by the negative value of the issue over which we disagree, we take steps to mitigate the damage, even up to dissociation. We ought to be careful, but often are not, that the steps we take to limit the negative effects of a disagreement we have with one of our own do not create more trouble for us than the other's mistaken opinion itself.

Francis Bacon, English scholar, politician, and Christian philosopher wrote of the twin effects of disunity "..[N]othing doth so much keep men out of the church, and drive men out of the church, as breach of unity...". There can be little doubt that this principle applies to all religions, and even to religion in general: few things keep the unfaithful that way more than the strife caused by religious disagreements.

In politics, people in general are attracted by a clear message, and repelled by petty squabbles over corruption, partisanship, and negativism. Whether the clear message is one of sacrifice or prosperity, war or peace, people will accept it more readily and rally to it more easily than if a mixed message is presented by multiple voices. Those already part of a faction may be temporarily energized by charges of corruption, or attacks on an opponent, and partisan fights over minor issues may test the mettle of a party, but viewed from the outside those tiffs are cause for the disdain of politics in general. Negativity requires escalation, as people become inured following each new outrage.

Unity is not the most basic good, however, as noted above. There are times when people disagree, and do so on matters of principle. When principles conflict, we must either capitulate or fight. But how to choose between Unity and some other value such as Life, Liberty, or Pursuit of power? We are required to choose sides, and to know how strongly we adhere to the side we have chosen.

For instance, we Christians have a basic agreement with the Islamofascists that there is a God, that there is life after death, and that certain things are moral and others are not. There are other specific areas of agreement, but the point is that on some level, we both battle the forces of atheism and postmoralism, those who have no God but themselves and no morality but mere ethics. Yet we oppose the Islamofascists, principally and obviously because they want us either to accept their way of thinking or to die. No theoretical partnership between Islam and Christianity can overcome their need to carry the banner of faith themselves, especially since they have chosen to view us as the enemy. So Unity with Islam will have to wait until its radicalism can be brought to heel.

In politics, as well as in religion, there are barriers to Unity. The case of Joe Lieberman is illustrative: here is a man of national stature, a statesman for whom our country should be grateful. But because of his refusal to subvert the defense of his country to politics, he is being shunned by his party. The same can be seen for ostensible Republicans who drift too far into liberality, populism, or intolerance, and are shunned, as well.

There is a difference, however, in rancor and divisions over matters of principle and questions of strategy. It is of utmost importance to maintain integrity of principle, and arguments visible to outsiders over these principles are a necessary evil. Squabbles over strategy and tactics are also harmful, and completely unnecessary unless they cast an unprincipled shadow; even then these should be kept private. Disagreement over strategy is often a mask for a hungry ego, or a poisonous ambition.

Unity is important, and I ask you: are the things on which we disagree, the things over which we squabble, argue, protest, and the things on which we go to war, are these things so important that our disagreement over them outweighs our value to each other?

I have answered the question specifically with respect to Islamofascism, which seeks to destroy first Israel and then the rest of the free world. But what of our fellow Americans of a different political party -- how great is the divide which separates us from them? Forget for a moment your rhetorical need to be right, and ask: is the amount of energy we apply to correct the wrongs of the other side greater than the damage to be done simply by accepting their errors? Can I unite with my rival to defeat our common foe?

Would you really rather show division to our common enemy than accept the goodwill of those with whom you disagree?

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Meanwhile, from the echo chamber

Markos Moulitsas Zuniga (DailyKos) has a certain perspective that I seem to lack. Living in an echo chamber can do that to a guy.

Speaking of Tuesday night primary winners and losers, he goes through a long list you can read about at his site if (if you promise to wash before returning). Then he says this:

Losers

Republicans. They're going to do some silly press conference on Wednesday claiming the Democratic Party is held in thrall by craaaazy people who agree with, um, 2/3rds of the American people on Iraq. If they want to make a big deal and remind people they have no exit strategy for Iraq, then by all means, therein lies the path to bizarro 1994.

If they really thought Lieberman losing was such a bad thing for the Democratic Party they wouldn't have gone out of their way to prop him up. Instead, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, the wingnutosphere, several Republican congresscritters, and the GOP's Big Money all rallied around their man. This is not a happy day for them.

Winners

Democrats. Did you see Rahm out of the gate tonight?

"This shows what blind loyalty to George Bush and being his love child means," said Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, the leader of the Democratic House Congressional campaign. "This is not about the war. It's blind loyalty to Bush."

This is a party with purpose. United on the war (under the call for withdrawal from Iraq), fueled by record fundraising and shockingly good poll numbers, and operating in the best political climate for the opposition since 1994, Dems are poised to make killer gains this fall. And without Lieberman in the caucus to undermine it from within, unity and commonality of purpose is now on the table.

One more point, and an important one to close with --

Tonight's race was watched from every corner of this country. There wasn't a city I hit during my book tour (and I hit over 40 of them) in which someone didn't ask about this race, where people didn't cheer when I mentioned Lamont's name.

Ignore for a moment that the leader of the Congressional Democrats called Senator Joseph Lieberman George Bush's "love child".

Kos thinks we "backed" Lieberman. He's sure that we aren't happy to see a three-way race in Connecticut, in which the huge war chest of Lieberman and the hordes of the nutosphere will do battle over one Senate seat in a Blue State, a seat that was so solidly theirs that it wasn't even on the radar.

So instead of getting behind their party chairbat, they'll be stuck in CT. Instead of taking advantage of the Internet's leverage to bring together local supporters with non-local ones across the country, as Republicans are doing, they will be stuck in the Purple Northeast, doing their best to beat Lieberman again.

Happy? You bet we are.

Ok, so what is this about an echo chamber?

Kos went on a book tour, out among the people of this great land. How many Conservatives showed up? Uh, I would say approximately none. The only voice he heard on his nationwide book tour and Venus natal declension party was the same one he hears every day on his blog, and every year at their little love fest. More moonbats.

So no wonder he thinks he's winning. Get someone in office first, n'kay?

The leader of the Congressional Democrats called Senator Joseph Lieberman George Bush's "love child". I wonder where Joe will caucus when he wins in November: with his knuckledragging neocon worshippers in the Republican Party, or with someone who dishes out personal insults?

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National Priorities

(Crosspost from Redstate)

Your nation, the land you call home, is divided. It has for longer than anyone can remember been controlled mostly by two parties, each of which knows, in its heart of hearts, that the land must be reunified if you are to deal with the threats facing you and to seize the opportunity to lead the human race into a new era.

The worlds you may discover will have to wait until you deal with the cancer of militant Islam. At least, that's what Ferdinand and Isabella decided.

---

The year was 1492. For the people and rulers of Aragon, Castile, and Leon, seven centuries had passed since the Muslims had invaded -- seven centuries of hiding in the Pyrenees and beginning the slow Reconquista. They built castles to stake out the territory they slowly won back (whence the name "Castile"). They had succeeded in reclaiming all of the Iberian Penninsula except for the Christian Portugal and the last remaining Muslim stronghold, Granada.

Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile were cousins, whose marriage would eventually result in a unified Spain. In early 1492, however, while their union and unity was a powerful force, the country remained divided among Aragon, Castile, Catalonia, and Valencia.

When Genoan sailor Christopher Columbus came to Ferdinand and Isabella wanting ships to sail across the sea to find a trade route that didn't require dealing with the Ottomans or the desert, they thought it was a good idea that would have to wait. They had a more pressing priority: defeating Islamic militants.

Only forty years earlier, the Islamic Ottomans had finally ended the Roman Empire (in one of its many incarnations, before and after) by conquering Constantinople. What solace it must have been to the Spaniards when, in 1492, they did in fact drive the Muslim Moors out of Granada.

But once the threat of an Islamic state on their soil was ended, Ferdinand and Isabella could sponsor this Columbus fellow. National priorities now allowed exploration and expansion, rather than merely purification. But purify they would, and through the disgrace and painful decades of Inquisition, their country became Spain.

And what of our national attention, dear reader? We had begun exploring the frontier of space, but our priorities are swayed mightily by the spectre of Islamic militarism. The space program goes on, but our government knows that its first responsibility is not to explore, but to defend. Once the threat of militant Islam is ended, we may again start the search for new worlds.

While history seldom repeats itself, the drag and waste that is the Global War on Terror will only end when we kick the terrorists off the pages of history. It would be entirely foolish to allow them to gain a foothold in space, and to that end we must crush them before any further exploration ourselves.

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