Human Nature
From The
Unsealed Room, via Red, this reminder that the worst in some people swine brings out the best in some victims people:
Like Korzchak, Kanidis didn’t
just accompany his students, he guarded their lives. On Friday, when the children began to lose consciousness from the stuffy air and their thirst, Yanis went to the terrorists. “You have to give them something to drink, at least to the smallest children,� he insisted angrily. One of the terrorists hit him with the butt of his rifle, but the teacher continued to yell: “How dare you!? You claim you are people of the Kafkaz region, but here in the Kafkaz even a dog wouldn’t turn down the request of an old man!�
His efforts bore fruit. The terrorist allowed the teacher to wet one of the bibs of the children and pass it around to dampen the mouths
of the little ones who were choking from thirst.
The hostages who escaped told how the teacher repeatedly risked his own life in order to save the children. He moved explosive devices that the terrorists had placed near the young students, and tried to prevent them from detonating others. When the first bomb exploded next to the windows of the school, parents and children began to run out. The terrorists, trying to prevent their escape, threw a grenade at them. The elderly teacher ran to the grenade to prevent it from exploding on the children. One of the terrorists shot at the teacher to try to stop him and Yanis was wounded in the shoulder but didn’t give up. With the laast of his strength, he continued to run, jumped on the grenade, covering it with his body. The grenade exploded, and the body of the teacher absorbed the explosion, protecting the children around him from injury.
Read it all, naturally.These stories are always, at best, bittersweet; this man, a hero and truly a moral giant, died - and yet the catastrophe happened.
It reminds me that the genuinely naive in this world depend on the goodness of people like Mr. Kanidis rising to the highest levels of human goverments. It doesn't happen.
The most genuinely irritating bumper sticker I routinely see on the backs of Volvos in Highland Park:
You Cannot Simultaneously Prepare for Peace and WarAlbert Einstein
In truth, the quote should read "Preparing for peace without preparing to defend and enforce that peace is meaningless and futile".
Posted by Mitch at
September 7, 2004 05:56 PM
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I like Einstein, but he was a pacifist, and pacifists are as wrong as warmongers. I, myself, am a realist; we must prepare for war, but we must be open to peace. And we should prefer peace to war, if the choice is ours. (And yes, I know it isn't always our choice.)
Posted by: Jeff Fecke at September 7, 2004 10:55 PMHey Mitch,
We must be neighbors. I see those same bumper stickers. And it is in Highland Park.
Loren
Posted by: Loren Willis at September 8, 2004 09:47 AMThe problem, Jeff, is that too many people - people who are ostensibly intelligent, responsible citizens, people who drive Volvos and live in Highland Park and think they're a cut above the rabble because they listen to MPR instead of Tom Barnard - take the out-of-context remark of a man whose genius was *not* foreign policy as the baseline of wisdom for a nation and people's response to evil. In a similar vein, they invoke Gandhi - a man who during WWII advised Jews to go willingly to the gas chambers rather than resist, a man who would himself have been liquidated had he existed under virtually any empire in history but the British - as the end of all discussion when it comes to matters of war, peace and pacifism.
And while you may well be more realistic than these sad specimens, Jeff, the fact is they're out there. They turned out for Dennis Kucinich and Howard Dean, just as they'll turn out for Phyllis Kahn and Ellen Anderson and Sandy Pappas. They are the Democrat party base.
Loren - I live in the Midway, but they're not uncommon here, either. They drive rusty Subarus, but it's the same basic idea.
Posted by: mitch at September 8, 2004 01:23 PMThey're Democrats, to be sure; they're the ones I always argue against at caucuses.
But I'll tell you what, Mitch: I was at the DFL caucuses this year, and while the crazies were there (to a man, backing Kucinich), the more sensible folks were the majority. My precinct voted down the inevitable "pull out of Iraq right now!" proposal by a wide margin.
Yes, these folks are DFLers, but they're 10% of the party. (They are overrepresented in St. Paul--I won't argue with you there.) Would you judge the Republicans on the 10% or so of the party that believes that we must require Christian prayer in schools every day, or the 3-4% of your party that thinks that things were better before segregation?
They're part of your base, too. But they don't define your party. For all our musings, the Democrats didn't choose Dennis Kucinich this year.
Posted by: Jeff Fecke at September 8, 2004 11:05 PM