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Lance Scranton: Terrorist attacks stir emotion

Lance Scranton
Lance_Scranton

I have to admit that after hearing, and seeing the death and carnage visited upon the French by Islamic terrorists this past weekend — I was upset. Obviously by what is happening all around our world, but also by the constant narrowing of intellect (some might call it fear) of identifying what is taking place. At the expense of actual human lives, there is an agonizing intellectual twisting and political refusal to acknowledge that we are at war with an ideology.

It is difficult to look out upon the world and think to myself that, “by the time my children are my age, what will terrorists be called?” Will they be victims of the evils of capitalism? The innocent fallout of overly aggressive western imperialist values or maybe they will be the victors. I’m hoping against hope that we will wake up and realize that protecting a way of life, our ideals, our shared values is worth fighting for and it will require more than tough talk and heartwarming platitudes about the primacy and eventual victory of our “universal values and ideas.”

I’m fairly certain at this point in the history of radical terrorism, that something very un-universal is taking shape in the form of people willing to travel great distances to hurt, maim or kill innocent people out to watch a concert, eat at a restaurant or watch a sporting event. Something “ultra-un-universal” is shaping up as we learn that some of the sick and twisted ideologies are being fomented within our own borders, using the internet and social media to “radicalize” people in our very own communities who begin to identify with these butchers.



So the solution is for world leaders to meet this month to talk about… wait for it… climate change! I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that these world leaders are right… the climate has changed and it has not a thing to do with coal mines or power plants. The climate in our country is shaping up to be one where the pressure rises on our fearometer instead of the barometer.

I’m just one man, one face in a sea of humanity spread out across a country so immense that I could spend a lifetime travelling and never see it all; one voice in a nation where some have seemingly gone numb to atrocities visited upon people because we forgot the one thing that got us here in the first place: Our ideas of liberty, our values toward life, our pursuit of happiness, and the concept that rights afforded to each one of us is inalienable.



A quote attributed to Scottish Clergyman Peter Marshall puts it more succinctly: “If you don’t stand for something, you will fall for anything.” I hope our ideals are worth standing for because what we could fall for appears to be standing at the gates with propane bottles full of nails just in case we disagree.


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