We necessarily and properly make great efforts through our police forces, through our armies, and in many personal and private ways, to protect our people from threats of violence and other dangers.
Sadly, our best efforts are not always successful in deterring crime – or war.
There are so many evil individuals and groups that are determined to have their way, victimizing others.
We see attacks upon our people domestically, and in our community, by law-defying individuals. And we see death-dealing violence in many wars throughout the world.
In far-away Russia, Islamic militants have suicidally attacked the regional Chechen parliament, murdering six people and wounding 17 other victims.
And in Baghdad, the chief U.N. envoy to Iraq was targeted by bombers. Though he fortunately escaped death, a member of the Iraqi security forces was killed, and others were wounded.
These are but examples of “man’s inhumanity to man” that are all too prevalent in our world of varied enmities and evils.
We should not have to live in fear, and fortunately, for the most part, we do not. But we must take precautions, and condemn all lawlessness – at home and abroad – that threatens anyone.
We recall the classic words of John Donne (1572-1631): “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
Humanity seeks to defend against inhumanity, sometimes sadly without success.