The president of the United States uttered an unfortunate word during a (semi)private conversation with the prime minister of Britain, while a microphone was on that shouldn't have been (we assume) and for the whole day or so afterward every news report I heard about the content of that conversation…
Like so many other complex issues, Americans don’t seem to understand global warming. In a Gallup poll conducted in March, respondents ranked their level of concern regarding several environmental issues. When asked to rank their level of concern over global warming, 36% of Americans claimed that it worried them “a…
Ever since the tragedy of September 11, 2001, there has been a fairly constant refrain heard in the United States. Americans, who once thought their country invulnerable, their culture beyond reproach and their global image impeccable, are asking, “Why do they hate us?” Human emotion being what it is, there is no single or simple answer to that question. They hate us for a number of reasons, some illogical, but some very understandable. And, while hatred is never productive, never defensible, its causes should never be ignored because its consequences can be catastrophic.
One of the things I hear Americans say they hate about us is our freedom. I would have to agree. There are those in the rest of the world who are as offended by our freedoms as are we by their despotism. They hate the fact that we have freedom of religion, that we have freedom of speech, that our women are becoming increasingly free to determine their own destinies. They believe that all these freedoms are an offense against all that is decent and holy.
I believe they are wrong. It is because of our freedom that I am able to write what I write, however controversial, however offensive to some. It is because of our freedom that my family moved to the United States in 1960. We left South Africa when the white government there was stripping the people, both white and black, of their freedom to speak out against injustice, to live wherever and …
I haven’t seen Hotel Rwanda. I actually rented the movie, and my husband and I started to watch it, but we had to stop. We knew what was going to happen, and we didn’t want to see it: we would have known what was going to happen even if we hadn’t had advance knowledge of the story. He and I know all about Africa. Personally, I am too broken-hearted about what is happening there to watch it played out on a 42-inch plasma TV screen.
It’s not just happening in Rwanda. We only hear about Ruanda more often now because this particular story has given that region a voice.
The stories are endless, one more chilling than the next. In South Africa, gangs of black youths who suspect an individual of not being “one of them” inflict horrible death. And they do not reserve the torture for adults. Children are not immune. One favorite form of execution involves soaking a tire in gasoline, placing the tire around the neck of the bound victim, and setting it alight. I repeat, this is done to children as well as adults. It is done to blacks by blacks, and the rationale behind the brutality is obscure. Sometimes it is tribal – amaZulu against any black not Zulu – sometimes there is a loosely formulated political agenda. Sometimes it is simply a case of bloodlust.
This is no urban myth. We have witnessed something like it personally. On our last trip to South Africa …
Would we harm our selves in ways that we would never let others harm us? Yes, actually. We do this all the time. This common occurrence has long intrigued me.
About fifteen years ago, I was trying to lose weight. A diet book I was reading presented a hypothetical, which I have embellished:
…Imagine that a gang of strangers repeatedly broke into your house. Each time they broke in, they brought a large basket of food with them. Each time they broke in, they tracked you down and forced you to eat food that you didn’t need or want. “Stop that!” You would yell. “I’m not hungry. Go away!” Nonetheless, the strangers forced you to eat food that you didn’t want. They returned every few hours and repeated his attack on you. Every time you tried to exercise, the strangers appeared and made you sit on the couch to watch television instead.
Over the course of months, the excess food the strangers forced you to eat caused your body to bloat larger and larger. Your clothing stopped fitting. It became difficult to get in and out of your car. Most of your acquaintances gossiped about how you had become “fat.”
And it got even worse. You became diabetic. You got depressed. You constantly cursed those strangers for making you obese and unhealthy. You bought special burglar-proof doors and windows (but they didn’t work). Because this gang repeatedly violated your rights, you even considered buying a gun to defend yourself from