Bill Gates, Violence in Mexico, Violence in General

Dear Readers,

I read this funny article about Bill Gates:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1158905/Microsoft-boss-Bill-Gates-bans-children-using-Apple-products--wife-admits-shed-like-iPhone.html

If you don’t want to read it, here’s my summary: Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, the third richest person in the world according to Wikipedia, doesn’t let his family get Apple products. Ha ha ha. Microsoft and Apple are rivals. But his wife, Melinda Gates, sort of maybe wants an iPhone. Ha ha ha.

Here’s one of the best lines, though: “Gates stepped down as chief executive of Microsoft to concentrate on charity. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the world's biggest philanthropic organisation.” Wow! I had heard about the Gates Foundation before, but I didn’t know it was the “world’s biggest philanthropic organisation”! Here’s the link to the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation: http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Pages/home.aspx Prominently displayed on the home page of that website is this mantra: “All lives have equal value.” Isn’t that wonderful?

I think Bill Gates is a great American and a model citizen. I think Bill Gates’ private company and private charity helps the poor better than Obama’s socialist-leaning plans will.

Ok, the next piece of news is a real downer, but it makes me proud to live in America and in Arizona, a relatively peaceful place.

Here’s the link to two articles about the same subject: (I found these through the Drudge Report, by the way.)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1159068/Massacre-central-How-drug-gangs-murder-torture-way-life-Mexico.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1158779/Thousands-Mexican-soldiers-pour-countrys-violent-city-crackdown-drug-gangs.html

The articles are about the violence that’s going on right now in Mexico, in the city of Juarez, with is just south of El Paso, Texas. The rule of law in Mexico hasn’t been doing so well lately. Mobsters, criminals, gangs, leaders of drug cartels, and other immoral people are running things down there. A lot of the politicians and police officers are in cahoots with the mobs. So the Mexican President, Felipe Calderon, just sent a big army to the city of Juarez to set things right.

This news story has also impacted a lot of Arizona college students’ Spring Break plans. Spring Break is just a few weeks away, and the three Arizona universities (Arizona State University, the University of Arizona, and the school I’m at now, Northern Arizona University) have all warned students to stay away from Mexico this Spring Break, because of all the crime and violence that’s going on down there.

I was chatting with a lady in the NAU Writing Center where I work a few hours a week, and she said that in Mexico, lots of people, sometimes tourists, get kidnapped by gangs, and are forced to withdraw the maximum amount of money you can get in one day from ATMs. Then the victims are kept overnight, and the next day the victims are forced to go to the ATM and withdraw the maximum amount again, and the criminals just keep the victims until their checking and savings accounts are drained.

There really are some horrible things going on in this world, and I’m glad that I live in pretty safe and peaceful place.

Now before any of you think or comment, “But wait Telemoonfa, America is a messed up place too! How dare you compare America to other countries and say that we’re so much better than they are?” Well, I’m not saying that there aren’t bad things that go on in the United States, especially, it seems, in inner cities, but I’m just saying that I’m glad that I have personally enjoyed peace throughout my life.

I think the news articles are somewhat optimistic. Hopefully the Mexican national military restores the rule of law. It’s too bad that so much blood has to be shed, but what can I say? This is a fallen world, and some of the people who live in this fallen world are downright wicked.

Somebody commented on one of the articles: (I like the comments that people leave after online news articles) “Good for the Mexican auithorities I hope they geyt successful in this case. Make a note that no social workers were shipped in!! Perhaps our Police should watch this with interest.”

And that comment just got me thinking about the anonymous commenter on this blog who discussed with me the idea of God using violence, and we brought up the issue of anybody using violence, really. It seems like some idealists, (idealists who typically live in peaceful countries that maintain a military force) believe that violence directed towards human beings is never justified. Of course I disagree. I think that sometimes violence is justified.

It would be great if we could solve the world’s problems through applying Henry David Thoreau’s idea of civil disobedience or Mahatma Ghandi’s idea of passive resistance, or the Jehovah’s Witnesses idea of never getting politically or militarily involved, but I don’t think we can solve some of the world’s problems through those peaceful methods, and I think that’s what history has shown.

Like this problem in Mexico, for example. What could social workers or therapists do in the face of all that anarchy? The President of Mexico was right to send soldiers, and not diplomats, to Juarez to stop the crime there. Calderon was right to send people bearing guns instead of people bearing flowers. And my view is, God uses violence when words and the Holy Spirit and other warnings don’t work.

The Marine Corps has done more to promote peace in this world than the Peace Corps has.

The arguments that some peaceful protesters use reminds me of Oscar Wilde’s arguments in an intriguing document, The Soul of Man Under Socialism. (I love to argue with and think about that essay. A lot of it is beautiful and I agree with some of it. I love Wilde’s ideas about art and beauy, but a lot of The Soul of Man Under Socialism is outlandish.

By the way, if Oscar Wilde were alive today, he would be known as a liberal. And Wilde would be a star, and the media, and teenagers, would love him.) Oscar Wilde basically says that punishing people actually creates crime. He says that in a perfect communist/socialist world, criminals will be treated by therapists, and all bad things will just go away. In Wilde’s dream world, in his visionary socialist Utopia,

“punishment will pass away. This will be a great gain - a gain, in fact, of incalculable value. As one reads history, not in the expurgated editions written for schoolboys and passmen, but in the original authorities of each time, one is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted; and a community is infinitely more brutalised by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime. It obviously follows that the more punishment is inflicted the more crime is produced, and most modern legislation has clearly recognised this, and has made it its task to diminish punishment as far as it thinks it can. Wherever it has really diminished it the results have always been extremely good. The less punishment the less crime. When there is no punishment at all, crime will either cease to exist, or, if it occurs, will be treated by physicians as a very distressing form of dementia, to be cured by care and kindness.”

I wish Wilde was right about how to stop crime, but I don’t think he is. He paints a picture of Utopia that is nice to think about, but in this fallen world I just don’t think Wilde’s ideas will work out.

Well, I hope you are all safe and healthy, and I’ll see you later.

Sincerely,
Telemoonfa