#Nine Passengers [View all]

[H2O Man]

"We are faced with evil. I feel rather like Augustine did before becoming a Christian when he said, ' I tried to find the source of evil and I got nowhere. But it is also true that I and a few others knew what must be done if not to reduce evil at least not to add to it.' Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children are tortured. But we can reduce the number of tortured children. And if you believers don't help us, who else in the world can help us with this?" -- Albert Camus


I saw some recent news about Ruby Franke. She previously had a podcase called "8 Passengers" about families and parenting. I had never heard of her until last August 30, when she was arrested along with her therapist, Jodi Hildebrant. They were charged with torturing Franke's children.

Both spent several months in jail, before being convicted and sent to prison. In general, somen's prisons do not tend to be as violent and dangerous as men's prisons. However, even moreso than Ruby and her therapist coming from a very different social class than most other inmates, the fact they were convicted for torturing children puts them at the highest risk for being attacked. If not, they will likely be shunned by other prisoners. For crimes against children are easily recognized as the lowest of the low.

Because it was Good Friday, at least when I started reading Camus, I had started with reading from "A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr." (Edited by James Washington; Harper & Row;1986). The 676 pages include speeches as well as his writings. I read two of his presentations: his eulogy for four children, and his most important speech opposing the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam war.

The first, of course, came after the KKK bombed the 16th Street Church in Birmingham, killing four little girls on September 15, 1963. The second was perhaps his greatest speech, "A Time to Breal Silence (Beyond Vietnam)" at the Riverside Church on April 4, 1967. In that war, like all others, children were wounded and killed by American bombs.

Those were the things I pondered while growing up. What would make a group of men bomb a church? Did our military draft young men to fight in war, because they hadn't matured beyond their high school days when they did whatever the coach asked? At what point does a sense of personal responsibility for one's actions come into play? Does it in everyone? How many steps away from the action does a person say no to torturing children" If your tax dollars are funding the torture and murder of children?

My generation was met with the contempt and violence of much of older generation when we said no to that ugly war, racism, and sexism. One of the things I remember is found in "The Eloquence of Protest: Voices of the 70s" (edited by Harrison Salsbury; Houghton Mifflin; 1972). It is a letter from a father, Dr. Paul williamson, of Mississippi, to his son, a college student. He wrote that if he protested the war, he deserved to be killed, just like the "revolutionaries" at Kent State.

Now, I was a young person at this time. So I couldn't figure out bombing churches or anywhere else, especially if there were children who would be killed or injured. Still can't. Or parents and grandparents who became furious and insulting of young people proresting such things. Even saying your kid deserves death for exercising his Amendment 1 rights, saying that threatened the country.

Basketball legend and philosopher Bill Russell said something when I was young, that I hope to never forget: "Pick your enemies carefully, because they are who you risk becoming the most like." Now I'm a grandfather, and find myself wishing more of my generation remembered what Mr. Russell said. I hear many my age complain about political-social rallies of young people, as if exercising Amendment 1 is a bad thing. Ignoring what Johnny Cash called "the lonely voice of youth," while expecting them to listen to us in a one-sided conversation.