Tribes and toilet bowls

Evidence continues to mount that the world* is little more than a swirling toilet bowl of blood.

Kenya's Rift Valley burns as death toll soars:
NAIVASHA, Kenya (Reuters) - Protests erupted in western Kenya and machete-wielding mobs faced off in the Rift Valley on Monday after scores of people were killed in ethnic violence, complicating mediation by former U.N. boss Kofi Annan.

Hezbollah demands inquiry into Beirut killings:
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Hezbollah, Lebanon's most powerful faction, on Monday demanded to know who was behind shooting that killed eight opposition supporters in some of Beirut's worst street violence since the 1975-90 civil war.

Gunmen free Pakistani school children and surrender:
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Gunmen who took up to 250 Pakistani school children hostage on Monday in a northwestern town freed them all and surrendered to tribal elders, a government spokesman said.

Can you see the common thread in all of these stories gleaned from today's headlines? It's tribalism, one of the most primitive forms of society in existence. Tribalism is the forerunner of socialism and shares many of its tenets, the idea that an individual is subservient to a group being chief among them. As long as any people embrace tribalism, they will behave in the above manners. When the individual is looked at as a means to an end, be that end social, political, or religious, rather than as an end unto themselves, they will be seen as expendable and the value of life will be cheap.

The West, and the United States in particular, could expend all of their resources and not change this primitive way of life. The West would, however, end up changing its way of life, and not for the better. But what would that gain the West? Even more enmity than it now has from peoples who do not understand and therefore cannot value liberty and its concomitant political/economic systems of a representative republic/capitalism. That old saying, "A man convinced against his will, is of the same opinion still," is no more true than it is when using force to drag tribalists to reason.

The United States must get back to being a shining example of a better life through the exaltation of the individual and the protection of his rights on its own shores. We must once again become the model primitives look upon as what life could be like and wish to work towards. Becoming involved in every internecine conflict around, inciting coups, backing any group over another, and generally meddling in affairs that have no direct or indirect bearing on the people of the United States--the only people of the world the U.S. government should be concerned with--serves only to tarnish our image AND, most importantly, to weaken our country. As harsh as it may sound, the primitives of this world are not worth one drop of American blood.

Yeah, I know it's a dream. But you know what? The coming economic calamities the United States is facing in the future (not-too-distant and medium term) just may turn out to be a good thing IF it causes us to rethink our dealings with clueless primitives and return to a constitutional form of government. Hey, I can dream, right?

Take care.
DAL357

*One notable exception being, even with all of its burdensome problems, the United States.