Consistent discipline works for both recalcitrant children and rogue nations.
With children, letting them know their options and the consequences of their choices and allowing them to choose and accept their consequences is the bedrock of discipline.
Growing up, all of us children knew that for standard disobedience, the punishment was three swats from the Red bud rod. For lying, it was “triples” or 9 swats.
Some infractions had stronger or different punishments: when I tried burning the house down by inserting foreign objects into our old furnace, Dad grounded me for 6 months (I think I was out after 3 months on good behavior). For throwing nuts and dirt over my friend’s neighbors fence into their pool, we had to go to their front door and apologize. When I yelled at mom ( a few times), dad “tanned my hide” until he felt I’d learned that wasn’t an approved method of communication.
But the consistency was that we knew when we did something, there were expected and consistent consequences.
Now what if my parents were elected every 4 years, and they could only get 2 terms consecutively?
That wouldn’t work for child-rearing, obviously. But it is the best bet for a Republican form of government.
And yet, many of the weaknesses that make a constantly changing head of state such a bad idea for a family continue into the structure of the Presidency of the United States.
Right now, there is a nuclear-armed North Korea threatening severe retaliation to any attempts to curtail their missile-rattling. They are publicly stating their intention of shooting a missile towards Hawaii. None of their current arsenal will reach that far, but it’s no light thing to shoot a missile in the direction of the United States of America.
It’s my country.
The organization which likes to think it is the supreme chancellor of the entire world has already laid out sanctions against North Korea explicitly stating that country is not allowed to export any weapons or weapons materials.
North Korea has their number: now shipping to Myanmar/Burma is a shipload of weapons origination from North Korea.
So the cheeky brat has toed the line. It’s the recalcitrant child acting up and testing how far he can push against the rules.
The UN is in high dander over this and is threatening… wait for it… more sanctions! Yea, that’ll stop ‘em.
The United States of America is not the mother of the world, nor the father. We’re the big brother. We’re not responsible for controlling the internal workings of other nations, but as the largest and most moral (I did not say perfect, I said “most moral”) we bear a responsibility to the rest of the world that is not shared by any other nation right now.
In the Reagan and Bush days, our President would be standing tall and calling the leadership of North Korea on the carpet for the systematic denial of basic human rights even to their own citizens. Shame would be called upon the leadership of that nation for it’s repression of dissent backward, anti-liberty policies. And for it’s missile-rattling, North Korea would be facing an insurmountable and effectively devastating result to it’s brutish and bullying behavior.
In the Obama era we sit, and wait. And send a single ship to babysit the weapons-carrying vessel as it plies the waters heading towards the despotic dictatorship destroying Burma/Myanmar.
We aren’t allowed to board or hinder the vessel in any way.
We can ask them to stop.
Perhaps these people just feel they are misunderstood by the rest of the world. And if we just ask them how they’re feeling they’ll open up to us.
A word of advice, completely free: Don’t let psychologists run the police department and don’t let them run foreign policy.
“How do you feel” is not a valid question in foreign policy. Particularly when the one you’re asking is holding the trigger on a nuclear device and when his history shows mental instability on the part of the entire government.
You hold up a bigger hammer that he has and you let him know that if he takes one more step, you’ll whack him.
And when he takes that step?
Whack him.
As an expectant father, I’m none too interested in raising my child in a new round of fall0ut shelters and nuclear attack drills.
MADD is not peace. MADD is fear. (Nothing against Mothers Against Drunk Driving).
I don’t live in fear.
I choose to live in peace brought about by the appropriate and effective use of threat and fact of force.
President Obama apparently plans to achieve peace through the shrinking violet method.
Something the American populace needs to understand, and quickly, is that every election is a foreign-policy election.
The less our government does internally to America, the better off we’ll be. The more our government is involved in protecting American interests off-shore, the better off we’ll be.
And because, right now, we’re still the most moral nation in the world. It can be generally said that when America operates in it’s own best interest, the world benefits from it.
Not that we are so full of ourselves that we believe goods things for us are good things for all.
But a strong United States of America means petty tyrants the world over will know they can trust the actions and will of America will be continually against their petty tyranny. And that if they attempt to export either their pettiness or their tyranny, we’ll be there with a big stick, a mop, and a bucket to beat them into submission again and clean up their mess.
A strong United States would be calling steadily and constantly for freedom of the election in Iran, and working actively in support of the open and democratic process in that nation. And the world would safer.
A strong United States would be responding to North Korea’s insane and idoitic ambitions as it would to a petulant and rebellious child. We would state the consequences of their continued stupidity, and if they continued, we would give them the consequences they were promised. And the world would be safer.
It’s not really a difficult or complex idea, from this side. Which is probably why the hyper intelligent President Obama, who, along with his leadership team insist on seeing everything in so many shades of grey it would make a color blind person swear they could differentiate green and blue.
But unless there is a consistent, strong, and swift exercise of our own (and all others on this globe’s) rights to life and liberty ensured through the appropriate show and use of force, there will be consequences…
For us.
