Murderers

It's tough to turn on the news these days without hearing the horrible news that someone is missing, only to find a few days later that their body was found in the woods somewhere. I realize that it's not too uplifting of a topic, but today's blog post is about...mass murderers.

Berkowitz. Dahmer. Bundy.

We have grown to equate these names with pure evil. Some of our nation's most infamous killers, this trio was responsible for the slayings of dozens people. David Berkowitz, known as the Son of Sam, killed 7 people and wounded seven others in the course of eight shootings in NYC between 1976 and 1977. Jeffrey Dahmer tortured, killed, and cannibalized 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991. And Ted Bundy confessed to 29 murders of young women across the United States, between 1974 and 1978.

These men were truly monsters, the worst of the worst. But what if I told you that a man had been discovered, right here in Greenville, who had murdered more people than all of these serial killers combined? Would it not be the story of the decade, the #1 news item on CNN, NBC, and Fox News?

Further, what if it was found that this man killed 100 victims over the past year alone? And that all of his victims were children under the age of 10? Can you imagine the outrage, the sheer horror we would feel? People would demand justice, pushing the police forces of the nation to put the capture of this child-killer as a #1 priority.

More time passes, and the police release another bombshell. It is true that all the victims were under age 10, but it is announced that in fact they were all infants less than a year old. Utter shock - a serial killer who targeted babies. Could it get any worse?

Yes, it could.

What if it came out that there were four other men in Greenville who committed the same horrible acts last year also...for a total of 500 innocent deaths? What if I told you that every city and town in the US has men like this, who are creating new massacres every day? What if I told you that the police, and in fact the public, have known the identities and locations of these men all along, and have done nothing about it? No criminal charges, no efforts to stop the insanity.

Well, every word of it is true. But it's OK, because we've made a nice word for it, to hide the horror.

Abortion.

Oh, that's not a fair analogy, you say. Abortion is LEGAL. Well, let me ask you this. Did Dahmer's victims ask to be torn apart? Did Berkowitz's victims beg to be shot? No, they were innocent victims of murder. In the same way, the killing of unborn babies is murder. They are defenseless, innocent victims of slaughter. Just because the mother, out of distress or desperation or selfishness, allows it to happen, it does not lessen the horror of what has happened - the murder of an innocent victim.

I personally believe that abortion is not just another "political issue" like immigration or the flat tax. No, it is far greater. It is a blight upon our nation, a shame so great that it affects the very heart of who we are as a people. Think about the numbers - a million murdered babies in the USA every year since 1973 - more than 30 million dead.

Some will say, "Oh, you're one of those one-issue voters." To that I say this. If my 1911 house were to catch fire in the middle of the night, do you think I would be concerned with the loose front porch railing? The unpainted trim in Zach's room? The drywall repair needed in the master bath? No, I would be a "one-issue" homeowner, running away from the flames. The magnitude of the one issue outweighs all the others.

And so, this Saturday I will go to the polls to vote for a person who I think would be the best to lead our country into the future. A person who realizes the vast horror that is occurring every day, every hour, in every corner of our great land. A person who will do everything in their power to plug the moral leak in the soul of our nation.

Will your vote help stop the horror, or perpetuate it?

Widgets

Today I was in an all-day meeting at work. And it got a little ugly.

I work for a global company. That is, a company which has plants and facilities in many countries across the world. In order to be more efficient and avoid duplication, my company wants departments who do the same thing, but in different countries, to use the same software. Makes sense, right? If I'm building widgets in the USA, and someone else in my company is building widgets in Japan, why not use the same widget-building software?

Well, this is easier said than done. Though we are both building widgets, my buddy in Japan has a slightly different process for building his widgets, so he claims his software needs are slightly different from mine. The challenge is, can the software be made to accommodate the slight differences in the widget-building process, or must we design and build two sets of widget-building software? My job is to help find ways to allow the use of one software tool which accommodates the needs of "widget-builders" in all countries.

So anyhow, in today's meeting, things got a bit heated when one group of widget-builders became convinced that their method of widget-building was fundamentally different from another group's, and thus required different software. They were convinced that the other country's widget-building process was crazy, and the folks from that country didn't understand why on earth we would use such a crazy method for building widgets here in the US of A.

So where am I going with all this?

It occurred to me that this gulf of understanding I witnessed today, regarding "widget-building", was very much like the talk-radio arguments you hear between liberals and conservatives. Both groups are convinced they are morally "in the right", and are doing the best thing for our country. Neither group of well-intentioned individuals can understand AT ALL how on earth the other side can possibly hold the positions they do.

I believe these positional differences (on abortion, the war in Iraq, taxes, etc) come from a fundamental difference in worldview. Wikipedia has a good definition of worldview: it is the framework of ideas and beliefs through which an individual interprets the world and interacts in it. In order to have a rational discussion of issues, it is necessary to first understand everyone's basic assumptions (worldview), and to work from there.

One of my goals as I blog is to lay out for you my worldview, and how I came to have it. Then, I can hopefully show that my opinions/thoughts/positions are internally consistent with my worldview. All this will hopefully lead to meaningful dialog with folks who may not share my opinions. You may not agree with my worldview, but hopefully you will be able to see how someone with my worldview would think, feel, and act the way I do...

Anyhoo, gotta get to bed, more widget arguments tomorrow!