A Tragic Mulatto

While my overwhelming feeling about our son we expect to be born this summer is joy, I have also have some of the self doubt that likely affects all new parents. One particular concern is the complexity of race my son will face:

Why is the biracial child always supposed to be a tragedy stuck between two worlds? Historically it was typically the white parents that hid these inconvenient results of affairs (Strom Thurman). Now the typical scene is older white grandparents raising a mixed child after the dissolution of the relationship that brought it about. Certainly the acceptance of these children that were once viewed as proof of the crime of miscegenation (or even rape) has improved in recent decades, but they are still often viewed as problematic in-between people. While the virulence of Racism (the belief that race makes a person superior or inferior to others) has become exceedingly rare, the problems of race in America—prejudice, misunderstanding, inequality, resentment, interpretation of history—are far from resolved. Here in Clarke County, Georgia there is still a palpable division between black and white populations. While much of racial integration in the United States may be producing a melting pot, here it still quite obvious on a drive through Athens that “haves” and “have nots” are still mostly divided by race.


So I will be a white father to a son that everyone will usually identify as African American. He will be biracial, but in most people's minds that will count him as black (eg: Haley Berry and Barack Obama both have one Caucasian parent). He will carry the cultural weight of expectations based solely on his skin color. He will have people expect him to be somehow better at sports, more sexual, cooler, tougher, more rhythmic, and less interested in learning. These are the expectations (even admirations) that our society puts on black boys. He will be informed by people that barely know him that he has been wronged by crimes committed years before his birth, and because of this he must act or identify himself in way to amend these ills. He will be told by others that he must be a individual, and any identification with any ethnicity or appeal to his unique dilemmas as a biracial man is nothing but weakness or whining.


But what will his father tell him? I am a product of my own place and I have never known many of the pressures my son will face. I wish I could say that my own experience of interracial marriage has helped me “figure out” the complex and often unspoken rules and taboos of race in today's America, but I have no great wisdom to offer my son.


What he will have for certain is two parents who know themselves and will love each other and him deeply. Beyond the self-knowledge he will have from the experience of his home, I'm not sure he will have much education on the confusing situation he will inherit. I suppose like most children he will have to figure out his identity on his own.

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Gridbook Fiction

This blog has become a fascinating place for essays and discussions on arts, culture, death, politics, community, and practicing medicine. So, I suppose I should mention my fictions. While I have been writing fiction as long as I could write, I have been much more private with my fictional works than my essays.

Fiction is more difficult to reveal to the world. Fiction is more subjective, but unlike poetry which is exclusively personal, fiction seeks to engage the reader with story out of the writer's imagination. Fiction reveals what the author feels to be meaningful, terrifying, and beautiful. But unable to speak directly about such transcendent things, the writer weaves them into a story and then gives the story to a reader. As Flannery O'Conner said, “You tell a story because a statement would be inadequate.”

There is also the risk of appearing foolish. Saying I hope to publish novels someday sounds like someone saying they hope to be a movie star—a pipe dream and a magnet for mediocre talent. Despite all of my years of working on my fiction, I still often doubt if any of the pieces are good enough to present to readers yet.

But I have spent too much of my life on this writing (much more time and energy than I have spent on this blog) to keep it hidden due to my own insecurities. I can only improve my skill as a writer by putting my fiction to the test of being read. So I have created the page Gridbook Fiction to be the literary sister site to The Gridbook Blog. Right now it only has a few stories (and one downloadable eBook) but I expect to add more over time.

Feel free to read if it interests you.

A Diet of Dreams

I just saw the film “Into the Wild.” It is a different perspective from Krakauer's brilliant biography of Christopher “Alexander” McCandless, but it's telling of the brief enigmatic life of McCandless is no less profound in it's effect on me. It is the story of a life I could nearly have chosen. I highly recommend both the book and film. I have included the response I wrote in my gridbook journal after I first read the book in 2003:




I finished "Into The Wild." Who cannot love this reckless young man? What older man cannot read this and see his own self in younger dreamier days? Chris McCandless lived out so many of my boyish fantasies. How many times have I looked longingly into a forest or a mountain range and thought "What if I just left the road and walked out into that?" I read and recall myself running a tiny path through the woods in the heart of a violent storm hearing the ancient trees crashing across the path behind me—exhilarated and feeling more alive than ever. I remember myself wandering the remote mountain villages in Haiti with nothing but a water bottle and a camera.

I recollect hearing Alexander often spoken or even sung about by friends in college; he had already become a sort of patron saint for young men like us. I got out my old CD of songs from college which mentioned McCandless. Listening to Tom singing years ago on these recordings always is emotional for me—relics of a world that no longer exists for me, a world that shaped me. I recall the nights in the cabin beside the fire with other wild-hearted young men singing songs, reading each other our melodramatic poems. We all had bigger dreams and bigger ideas then: meeting before sunrise to sing prayers in the form of Gregorian Chants, because ancient monks had purer hearts than we ...playing soccer naked at midnight after butchering and cooking our own pig ...reading books by men long dead ...growing long beards ...sleeping in abandoned garages and cotton fields as we wandered the back highways without a map ...walking barefoot and reading books in trees.

We didn't take things as far as Alexander. We were mostly normal college students who usually slept in beds, flirted with girls, and ate processed foods, but we all had a piece of ourself in another world. When we wanted we could partake in the food of saints and dreamers. Now as an older man I am exclusively a man of the "real world." Alexander turned his back on the "real world" and lived exclusively on a diet of dreams far more vigorous than our occasional tastes, and he died of starvation in his sleeping bag. Who cannot envy this arrogant, foolish boy who never sold out?

My days of risks are over. I have a wife now, I will not run in a hurricane or wander uncharted villages alone again. These minor risks were appropriate for a young man, but now my wife is my priority and I must act responsibly. I am proud to be her husband and would never trade her for any one of McCandless' freedoms. I will soon have patients that depend on me for their life and health, and this will also be good. The ties that bind us are good. There can be virtue in this world too. One of those virtues is discipline. I have a huge test soon, and I have spent an entire day in this book and these sentimental musings. These are things I cannot do. Too many people are trusting me.

I leave this now to try to refocus myself on the work that has been set out for me. As I go I say a silent prayer for Jade and Fernando–the last two among us to live so exclusively on a diet of wild dreams–wherever in the world they might be . I could imagine either of them turning up dead on an adventure even more beautiful and foolish than Alexander's, but I pray that they are safe, as I also earnestly pray that they are doing nothing so banal as my work today, that they never give up that which I have chosen to leave behind. Somehow knowing that they are out there living these dreams makes my own burdens feel lighter.

The Other Caribbean

How should we best live in a world with inequality?

I just went on a cruise in the Caribbean with my in-laws: a celebration of my wife's parents' birthdays. We celebrated on a large beautiful ship that carried us through the warm waters of the Caribbean. The ship was a floating pleasure palace taking us to private beaches with perfect turquoise water.

Perhaps I am already too disillusioned to enjoy this Caribbean, because I have seen the other side of these islands—the side hidden from vacationers. I lived a summer in Haiti eight years ago, so the warm blast of tropics brings to my mind suffering, disease, and death. Unlike our own sterilized tropics of Florida, the paradise of the Caribbean seems to me a bandage hiding a gaping wound of human suffering.

This place has become the perfect escape because here among the impoverished the American can live like a king. We are taught to imagine the poor people as living charmed idyllic lives. Their suffering and squalor is carefully hidden from tourists.

On this cruise another island people, Indonesians, did all the manual labor on the ship. They were hard working and kind to all of us over-eating vacationers. I asked one Indonesian man what he does on his days off, but he has no days off—not a single one in his 11 month work contract. I asked what he does when he goes ashore, but he isn't allowed off the ship. All this labor for what I'm sure I would find a shockingly small salary. This is certainly a job he chose of his own volition, but not in some fair system in which transactions are beneficial to all parties, rather out of desperation because his world contained no opportunities at all. It is his cheap labor that makes this pleasure cruise affordable to Americans.

I don't think all inequality is necessarily wrong, but it is not a thing to desired. It also seems obvious that inequalities easily become opportunity for exploitation of those less advantaged. Our use of the people of these islands for our enjoyment demonstrate a pattern of exploitation, both intentional and unconscious. These island are populated by the decedents of sugar plantation slaves—the sweet, fattening substance was produced by the most brutal form of slavery this continent ever saw. Are we so sure that now our behavior towards them in the tourism industry is not also exploitation? Do we not purchase the destitute of the world cheaply with our dollars?

When I was a boy I first saw third world poverty in Mexico on a vacation. We were American tourists on buses, being taken from a beautiful hotel to a scenic destination. Out the windows I couldn't help but see them, people dressed in rags living in tin shacks. My father saw me staring. He said, “A lot of people here have it very hard, but I am glad we came here. Being here on vacation means the money we spend goes to improve their economy here.” My father is a good man, who worked hard and saved to give his family a nice vacation. He was genuine in his belief that he was being socially responsible with his tourism, and I believed him then.

But I have since lost my confidence that trickle-down economics will save the destitute in a world that is stacked against them. I have also come to believe that coming here to celebrate our good fortune in front of those who have nothing is an unintended insult to them. Treating our fellow man with dignity requires we don't use him wrongly.

I'm not always sure how to live in a world with inequality, but I am certain this will be my last pleasure cruise in the Caribbean.

Gridbook Endorsement: Ron Paul

The Gridbook Blog endorses Ron Paul for President in 2008.

First I should say that it is not my intention to tell anyone how they should vote. Many people of good conscience, strong values, and excellent intelligence (such as my wife) vote differently than myself for various reasons. The intention of discussing politics on a blog, however, is to influence thought and shed light in the sometimes dismal world of political power. With all the discussion of politics (with a good bit from a personal perspective) on this site I think it is reasonable for me to also let you know for whom I am voting and why I think this person would make the best president.

With an atypical set of political stances it isn't easy to choose a major party candidate to support. It is much simpler to pick out the ones that I think would be the worst (such as Gulliani and Clinton) than the best. I initially found Ron Paul by accident when googling the term "consistent life politics." All I knew about Paul before was that he is a Libertarian with a small but passionate following, particularly on the web. I decided to do a little research on this congressman. Although Dr. Paul doesn't use the term "consistent life" to describe his politics, his positions seem to adhere better to consistent life values better than any other candidate of which I am aware.

First of all Dr. Paul is very pro-life on Abortion. Unlike a lot of Republicans that give the tragedy of abortion lip service but don't seem inclined to do anything to stop it, Paul is pro-active and has introduced legislation to amend the constitution to define human life as running from conception to natural death. Paul is also opposed to aggressive and violent intervention around the world. He is the only person running for president in either party that voted against the Iraq war from the beginning. While he is not a pacifist, he seems opposed to the use of deadly force in most cases that don't involve national defense. He is opposed to the federal death penalty, although he seems open to it on the state level.

Dr. Paul mostly discusses these positions based on his constitutionalist, limited-government values, however, his underlying beliefs seem consistently compassionate and anti-violence. His experiences as an OB/GYN and a serviceman during Vietnam seem to have left him with a strong aversion for violence. He is quoted pointing out how odd it is that his fellow pro-life, Christ-loving politicians so often seem the most eager for war and bombing. I couldn't agree more.

I certainly am not a Libertarian. I do not have the same confidence that just because free markets create wealth they can also fix all other ills if sufficiently unrestrained. (I have even been known to border on Socialism) But with the recent poor performance of liberals and conservatives in the executive branch, I am certainly willing to give a Libertarian a try. Having listened to quite a few of his speeches and interviews I cannot help but be struck by his intelligence, straightforwardness, humanism, and apparent integrity. Like his policies or not you have to be impressed with Paul's character. I know that looks can be deceiving in politics, but he certainly seems a breath of fresh air compared to most candidates who seem unable to speak in anything other than prefabed sound bites.

There are certain positions on which I would differ from Dr. Paul like immigration and certain approaches to civil rights, environmental policy, and medical care, but looking at the overall candidate I cannot help but pick Ron Paul from the rest of the major party candidates as most worthy of my vote.

I strongly encourage everyone to learn more about Ron Paul before you go to the polls this primary.

Changing Decades

Reflections from my journal. The two pictures are ten years apart.

I turn 30 tomorrow. While I am certainly not old yet, I am no longer young. I know that it sounds odd, but this change of decades has caught me by surprise. I didn't really see myself as older, in fact my idea of myself hasn't changed much in the last decade. While the decade from ten to twenty contains necessary change from child to adult, this next decade was more like the simple passage of days that suddenly added up to another decade without being aware of aging. While I have certainly had new experiences and learned new things, I am psychologically, physically, and mentally not very different from that twenty year old—not enough to feel ten years older. This combined with the rapid gestation of our first child, and my first real job as an independent MD, has created a sense of suddenly finding myself much older.

Perhaps it is due to a culture that glorifies youth and fears aging, but I had really grown attached to my idea of myself as a “young man.” Being a young adult allows one to be idealistic, hold strange ideas, and act eccentrically, write fiction, and wear worn and torn clothes—all acceptable and expected in young men, but a bit silly for a grown man. And what is one to do about this surprising loss of youth? Nothing is more pitiful than an adult who tries to seem young by dressing or talking like young people. I must accept that I am no longer young and attempt aging with grace—realizing that 40, 50, 60, etc. will likely overtake me with similar stealth.

These sorts of thoughts make me question how I have used my time. While based on average life expectancies I still have over half my life ahead of me and I am hopefully still far from the stage of unavoidable physical and mental decline, I have passed the freest of decades now. As a father and practicing physician much of my time from now will not be my own.

Myself as a twenty-year-old would have expected to do more over this decade. I would have expected at this point to have done more to make the world better, to have written some important book, and to have a deeper relationship with God. Instead I find myself with a job, a mortgage, accumulating things I don't need, thinking more about my own desires and comfort than about what is right and true.

There is good reason to stop and reflect at thirty. Too often ideals and hopes fade as we age. The Baby Boomers were right to not trust anyone over thirty—look how sold out and self-absorbed they became as they aged! Aging is inevitable as long as life goes on. I can only hope that the apathy, atrophy, and closed-mindedness won't be necessary side effects of becoming older.

Death & Christmas

This is a poem I wrote in Haiti after watching a newborn baby (the one in the picture) die. I hope it doesn't lessen your joy of Christmas, but perhaps deepen joy with a perspective we all need: the understanding that our hope was bought with a price.

The Incarnation

Why did I ever come forth from the womb to look on trouble and sorrow, so that my days have been spent in shame? -Jeremiah 20:18

Unto us a child is born
Unto us a son is given.
Born of blood,
Born to bleed.
Born into the cold
Born into squalor
Among the filth of animal feces
On the coldest night of the year
Night air carries distant moaning,
The bitter moaning of death vigils.
Many die on such a night.

...and the bloody infant
Miserable yellow jaundice.
Wrap the infant tight,
Lay him shivering in the hay
To be bitten by lice and fleas
And bored through by parasites.
He whines and writhes,
Vomits, then shakes in quiet agony
But the child will not die tonight...

He will live to know more agony
The suffering life of a dirty peasant,
Building with broken hands.
Born of suffering,
Born to suffer.
And pitiful, muffled cries draw
Men of the fields,
ugly and reeking,
Bringing infection to the infant.
Unto us a sickly child is born,
Unto him the plague is given
And the infection of us all
Will be upon his shoulders.
But the wretched one will not die tonight...

He will live to know more agony
To die tormented and alone,
Rather than here in his mother’s arms.
Brought to life this night
Brought to life to die.
In the wretchedness
Of this yellow, shivering body:
Here is the only hope
Of peace and salvation.

Unto us a sickly infant is born.
Through suffering hope is born.
And the weight of the world
Will be upon his shoulders.
And Death will be upon his shoulders
Tremble before your newborn Savior.

…and the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us.


*

Values and Personality: Part II

An examination of the effects emotions and personality on political beliefs, continued from Part I:

Part II: Non-Violence

The transformation from a hawkish conservative to a pacifist opposed to the death penalty didn't begin with careful reasoning, but with subtle experience. First, I fell in love. I married the most amazing woman. Perhaps it is an accident of natural selection that young males are eager to kill or die for their nation or a cause, but having a wife and now a child on the way have tempered any inclination toward killing. The list of things I would be willing to kill or die for rapidly began to empty. The only thing I would be willing kill for is to save her from danger. The thought that I had once been willing to go to war and kill another woman's husband filled me with remorse. I find now as a husband and father that violence and cruelty depicted in films which had never bothered me before often make me sick to my stomach.

Another thing that happened was that I became a doctor. Suddenly people dying and suffering, which had before been an abstraction, became something I saw frequently and intimately. Before I had rather harshly realistic opinion that everyone dies. Perhaps I have a “thin skin,” but after caring for so many as they die I can no longer have such a cavalier attitude toward the death of a human being. No matter how painful or peaceful, the end of a human life strike me as an immense tragedy. We all still die and suffer, but I can never speak of the death of another human lightly. Even more so willfully killing a person, even a vile person or someone who is a threat, became horrible to my mind.

Medicine also altered my concept of “deserving.” Much of the illness I care for in my patients is self-inflicted through unhealthy decisions made in the past. The conservative idea that bad acts should get what they deserve, doesn't work in medicine. My oath as a physician binds me to care for the suffering and ill regardless of patients “bringing it on themselves” or not. It is my job to prevent (as much as possible) people from getting “what they deserve” from years of unhealthy habits. I should advocate for health, but realizing unhealthiness exists it is my job to forgive and restore. Perhaps it is a stretch, but my job in human restoration after bad deeds made me wonder about humans metering out the justice of God by putting evil people to death. My own experience in my family of evil and redemption again figured in my perspective. Also in medicine I have cared for many prisoners, including several who I know killed others ruthlessly. Did I have the right to tell them they didn't deserve lifesaving care because they were bad? No. They were in chains and no longer a threat to anyone. Why should I want them killed?

The ancient rule of medicine is “First, do no harm.” This beneficent rule has restrained physicians for centuries. We are not any better than any human beings, but something as simple as this has given us perhaps the greatest respect among professions. I liked this principle. It made sense and even misanthropic doctors act well when they are reminded of this oath. I sought such a simple principle for my political beliefs. The Consistent-Life Movement is above all things simple: Kill no human. It fit with my pro-life upbringing. It fit with my Christian beliefs. While the holy scriptures don't expressly prohibit capital punishment or war, the commandment to love others with the sacrificial love of Christ certainly makes consistent non-violence seem consistent with my belief.

During this internal transformation of my values, the external world seemed to be moving to confirm my new views. The war I had initially supported had become long, bitter, and pointless. Now our brave soldiers are dying and killing to prevent a cataclysm that our invasion set in motion. Certainly this preemptive war was started with the best of intentions: a fight for security and freedom. This war and my initial support of it leaves a sad stain on my consciousness. How easily I supported sending our defenders to kill and be killed! I now deeply believe that war should always be a last resort and only in self-defense.

My conservative friends and family think me a bit of an embarrassment for becoming a vocal pacifist, and liberal pacifists find my antiabortion convictions to be offensive, but I must admit being consistently pro-life is a relief. I am by no means a perfect person or a perfect Christian, but to my mind this is the most true and honest way to let the mind of Christ effect my politics. “As far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.” -Romans 12:18 And so my mind is at peace with this. With a personality that impulsively spills my thoughts out to everyone (as evidenced by this blog) it is this piece of my mind that I speak.

Values and Personality: Part I

With all the soapbox speeches on this blog, perhaps I would do well to examine the personal conflicts and influences that produced these convictions. While many essays here are commentary, this site is personal and the essays are personal thoughts.

Political and ethical beliefs are not arrived at in a vacuum with only logical extrapolations from fundamental principles. They arise organically within a mind after mixing with the milieu of experience, emotions, and personality. As Chris often points out the logical arguments for my stances often leave much to be desired. While I must work on more thoughtful reasoning, “one cannot help but believe, that which seems true.” Thus I will try to provide an examination of how these values came to seem true in my mind:

Part I: Pro-Life

I was raised in the Pro-life (anti-abortion) Movement. My mother was a passionate pro-life activist. She had two abortions, before having us, and she had initially scheduled me to be terminated as well. Seeing the wrongness of what had been done, she poured her energy into preventing further killing of innocent fetuses. As long as I can remember there were bumper stickers on the car and we carried signs at rallies. We were taught that if enough people got involved America would come to it's senses and stop the killing. To a child there was an overwhelming sense of optimism and hopefulness in the face of terrible wrong.

The impact of abortion within my family deepened the belief in the rightness of being pro-life, but it also prevented any sense of enmity in my conviction. How could I despise those who have abortions, when my own mother, who raised me to be pro-life and saved me from being aborted, had once done this? I believe this perspective nourished my sense of empathy, and led me to a much more nuanced view of evil. Conservatives often think in terms of good guys and bad guys. Even as a young person I couldn't fully accept such as simplistic explanation.

Being Pro-life and Christian my parents raised me Republican and Conservative. I believe due to this political affiliation I was initially in favor of the death penalty and hawkish about war. I even considered applying for a military academy. While I certainly had a young male bravado, I was never eager for violence, but I was taught it was a necessity for responding to evil in the world. While I couldn't quite accept the conservative concept of bad guys versus the rest of us, I did accept that violence kept order and prevented worse evils. Killing our fellow humans (guilty humans -since I was pro-life) was a necessary evil in this world. I even supported Bush's invasion of Iraq as recently as 2003, but by that time my confidence in the acceptability of violence was already waning.

(for more on becoming a pacifist see Part II)

Buy Nothing Day!

Happy Buy Nothing Day! In response to the mass buying frenzy that happens starting today (an unfortunate manipulation of the traditional thankfulness and giving associated with these holidays) today is declared "Buy Nothing Day" (a holiday that Congress would never dare officialize). So today we remember our humanity and fight the ways that we are defined as and depended on by society to be "consumers." We also reflect on how our own greed and materialism makes us complicit in this sad spectacle.

Perhaps with enough reflection we can realize that the gift of Christ on Christmas would be less honored by unrestrained buying of things that people don't need, but by giving to those we love by serving those whose need is deepest.


PS: Perhaps I should clarify the preachy tone of this blog, by pointing out I am not some monk or Daniel in Babylon who is not soiled by such things. My own guilt in this love of things makes me need a day like this more than anyone.

When Dreams Become Responsibilities

The last few weeks I've been having the same dream: I am working in the Emergency Room surrounded by patients I can't cure with problems I can't even understand. In the bizarre logic of dreams, my patients seem both real and somehow blurry enough that their illnesses never make sense. These dreams last all night. I awaken, realize I have been dreaming, but cannot shake off the anxieties of the dream; “What would I do if that really happened at the hospital?” (Unable to realize that dreams present problems to which there are no solutions.) I fall back into fitful sleep. My wife says I talk frantically in my sleep. These dreams only come on nights before my shifts at the hospital.

It is interesting that I once would have said it is my “dream” to be a doctor. Although I love my job, my former dreamy idealism has been replaced with heavy duty. Before in residency, I was in a group of many training doctors and was never the one finally responsible for the care I gave. Now as I work 24 hour shifts in this rural Emergency Room, I alone am responsible for the life and safety of every person who enters the doors.

Fortunately in my waking work, even my patients with complex problems eventually make sense to me, and I believe the care I provide really is quite good. People I know occasionally bemoan not reaching ambitious goals they set for themselves. My daydreams are the opposite: I think how nice it might have been if I hadn't passed my medical school entrance exams. I could work a regular job without weary nights, death, suffering, and weighty responsibility. My brother recently left nursing school. He told me, “I like working with people, but if I give the wrong medicine someone might die. I don't think I want a job like that.” A few years ago I would have tried to talk him out of this. Not now.

My wife reminds me that I had similar dreams during my first year of residency. I grew out of them, as I became more confident in my new role. Hopefully I will also grow stronger under the burden of this dream I have chosen for myself—strong enough to carry it's weight with grace and patience.

Is Violence Effective?

This post originally started as a response to this post on Turn the Clock Forward.

A book a few years back called “Freakonomics” claimed that legalized abortion in America is responsible for decreasing the crime rate. (We aborted future criminals.) Since then much pro-life debate has focused on discrediting this argument. Similarly and more recently in the news the administration has been claiming it needs the ability to torture and hold people indefinitely without charges if it might save American lives. Pacifists and civil libertarians seem only able to counter with the claim that this behavior might be harmful in the long run because it hurts our image in the world. People of conscience seem bound to a debate that judges right and wrong based on utility.

I think we should be careful not to focus our pleas to stop violence on outcomes. Do I believe the argument that abortion lowers crime? While I don't want it to be true, it could be! Could torture prevent a terrorist attack? Quite possibly? Even if certain types of killing and violence does make the US people safer we still must stand against it. We should be committed to non-violence because it is right, even if it isn't always safe.

Even if preemptive wars and bombing civilians saved lives, even if capital punishment prevents crime, even if euthanizing the severely disabled does ease burdens on society, even if racial profiling gets drugs off the streets, even if embryonic stem cells do cure diseases, even if torture prevents terrorist bombings, even if aborting poor babies prevents crimes --these things are inherently wrong; wrong even if done for all the right reasons. Violence is an excellent way of enforcing peace and stability. Violence works even when it is wrong.

Our job (a difficult one) is to show people a better way. Forgiveness and love are better than violence, but people have to seek peace because it is right not because it is effective. (We Americans have a bad habit of mistaking efficiency for rightness.) Some hopeful idealist point out that if everyone practiced non-violence the world would be perfectly and effectively safe. While this is true in theory, there has never been a fully non-violent society this side of heaven, and in this world non-violent people often end up nailed to crosses.

Peaceableness wins the hearts and minds of people not by proving better outcomes, but by living out a truth that people will want to follow despite any danger.