yesterday, just before it started raining, i asked our czech exchange student to help me bring in our flags 
- the u.s. flag and the bonnie blue flag of federalism. as we were taking the american flag in, i admonished him to be careful not to let the flag touch the ground. then began the conversation that reminded me of why i get so frustrated with four-year-olds.
he said, "why?" so i tried to explain to him pride in country and the honor we afford the american flag and protocol we follow to take care of the flag. "why?", says he again. so i continue to try to get across to him, what we believe it means to be an american 
citizen. and the circle continued. after 3 or 4 more "why?"s, he finally proclaimed "you american's care too much about stupid things."
wow. just like that. i kind of smiled and said, "well maybe. but i bet we'll be our own independent nation after you are no longer." and i walked away and put it out of my mind.
later on, while we were all watching 'the patriot' he asked "why do american boys want to go to war? why do they not just try to solve things with talking, because i think that is nicer than fighting." and i realized that it was going to be a long, long night.
i asked him if he had ever tried to reason with a bully. after several minutes of getting him to understand the phrase "reason with" and then to understand what a bully is, the conversation really got 
under way. he admitted he had never been bullied, but knew others who had. so the conversation went something like this:
"did those boys who were being bullied first try to talk to the bullies to get them to stop?" he replied, "no, these mean people will not talk, so the people just gave them what they wanted." so i said, "and once the person gave the bully what he asked for, did the bully go away and leave him alone?" "no, he kept asking for more." was the response.
we went back and forth in this vain until he finally said "you can't stop a bully so you must just give him what he wants so you can try to live as peacefully as possible and then no one can blame you if he does something bad to someone else." and once again, wow. just like that.
i finally told him, that we fight the bullies. i told him to remember when the bully would pick on you that walking on the other side of the playground got you nothing. that when the bully knew he had you on the run he kept after you no matter what you did.
the only way to stop a bully is when the bully start picking on you is to hit them in the nose just as hard as you can. then, while they have tears in their eyes just beat the holy hell out of them. then, and only 
then will they will leave you alone. diplomacy is a fine place to start, but if you don't have force as a backup plan, it will do no good. standing up to the bully is all that will.
the conversation continued to ahmadinejad and the right to bear arms and osama and hitler so-on-and-so-forth throughout the evening. i'm not really sure he understood all of what we discussed, but he did concede at the end that it would be better to live without bullies than to be constantly giving them what they want - i think the hitler analogy may have helped there.
he also acknowledged that it was the american's who stopped hitler, but wondered why we can't just all get along. he further mused "is this country, or any country, really worth fighting for if people are going to die?" i wonder, has he been so steeped in the "i'm ok, you're ok" mentality that there is little hope of developing righteous moral outrage at the perpetrators instead of those fighting against the tide?
perhaps we should all take to heart
john stuart mills' words from the 19th century:
"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. A man who has nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety is a miserable creature who has no chance at being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
check out this great post via free republic from april of 2005 and it ties in even more. we must care and me must take action.
so, do we care too much? maybe some do, and maybe some don't care at all - those who believe we're all just one world and we need to be excellent to each other (to borrow from bill and ted). but i think most of use fall in the category of caring some, but not enough.
what say you?
