Mogadishu is the next African country using very young boys as soldiers.  I’m sure it was done by many cultures thousands of years ago, done by us in taking New England and its expanse and done by many during the roll of history.  These realities do not make those who ever employed them right and similarly, it does not make those using them currently right, or as, more interestingly, as freakish as a “civilized” nation might view.

African boys, if the news I hear is to be believed, have for decades been recruited at extremely young, prepubescent ages, plied with drugs, given guns and taught how to torture and kill before being ordered to do the same.  These young boys complied, by our standards, under duress.  It should not take any explanation to know why this recruiting is wrong, dangerous and both a blight on and a locked door to the future of the origin continent.

It turns out they are starving – the people and the child warriors.  The fact of starvation disturbs Christians, which should not take any explanation to know that the fact that it is disturbing is good.  It is not that other religious and the non-religious, governmental and non-governmental organizations don’t do the same as the Christians referred to, but it is not the issue or the point I am making.  Christians help by sending food.  The US government “helps” by sending guns along with their assistance of food and water.  So what is the problem?

It will not be long before these generations of child warriors will become men.  As men will they be more Christian or more under duress?  Obviously different man will turn out differently, and I’d guess we’d get a significant number on each side – although I have no guess onto the evenness of the distribution.  With these new men, what can we as Americans expect?

From the Christian side of the equation, we can likely expect good living as close to it as they can get – a miracle given the duress they were formed under.  But what of those men who reside in the bodies of duressed boys?  We should expect just what we expect of our own men-living-in-the-body-of-duressed-boys, problems.

So, with generations of problematic boys to men, how will America be effected?  This is where I get to the point.  If we help feed them, feed their mothers and fathers, teach the production of potable water, sustainable faming and triage medicine, these men may view us favorably, rather than, as the fringe elements of Muslim religion teach, as the enemy.  If we are “Christian” (New Testament, not Old) in extending our hands to these boy-durresed-men, then when their inevitable rage, angst and vengeance against life itself manifests, at least part of them will look on us not as the enemy, but as a people trying to help.  And this is yet one more reason why being a (New Testament) Christian matters and helps make America safe.

I believe my pure intentions are enough,

Yet I am stricken by the idea there exist standards unhinged from intention which fail me.

Your love is bread,

Your bread is life,

Your life is my life,

Your way is my way.

And my way is the way you lay bare for me,

Set forth the capacity to see,

Give me the capacity to be me.

So,

I supplicate,

I replicate,

I bask in you

And keep at bay me from the we that you so generaously provide

That I so humbly contrive as me,

Being you is we,

Hear my plea,

Help me see.

Grant solace where it does good and

Leave me until you need me and

I will await my fate, be it soon or late,

Whatever your love

Is great.

“My Wild Mind”

“I Float”

“On Donner”

Argument: American politics have been run by weak men since Johnson, men who have allowed weaker ideas to govern, criminals, losers and the mentally vacant.

Argument: Privacy, Overcrowding and an interview with Mr. Mike, a Ukranian OTB

Argument: Intoxication is time-tested, having produced  both great-art and death