Deum, in adjutorium intende.
Domine, ad adjuvandum me festina.

The following I wrote on September 13, 2001 and sent in to the local paper, which they published. It demonstrates one of the reasons we have "snowflakes" among our young people, I think. The local high school (and probably many others) had chosen not to show video of the 911 attack with people jumping to their deaths, etc.

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   Why are we protecting our children from the world's reality? They watch the mindless, sensational reality shows on TV. They play video games and watch movies with plenty of gore.  The high school administration was wrong, I believe, in not dealing up front in every homeroom with the horror of this week's act of war and what it might portend They should see, as should the rest of the country, the mutilated humanity and what an abomination has been committed against our free way of life.

   As WWII was ending, I was 13 years old. We children saw the living skeletons and piled up naked bodies from Auschwicz. They were in newsreels at theaters, shown between two features and assorted short subjects. My parents came home after three years in a Japanese prison camp in Manila, PI.  They took me to an ex-POW meeting at which films were shown of liberated Manila after 28 days of fighting and massacre. I saw brains spilling out of a Japanese helmet. I saw, bloated, unrecognizable bodies. I saw filipinos with their intestines spilling out of their bayoneted torsos. There were babies, children, women and men. There were Japanese soldiers, charred from flamethrowers. My mother wanted me to see what innocent people, adults and children, saw up close and personal.

   My simple ration book life with few wartime inconveniences, gave me no real concept of what war was really like. The films, my mother said, were all too accurate, except that the smell was missing. We Americans should try to protect our children from needless pain and suffering. We hope that they will never have to see what thousands of children in Africa and the Middle East, are exposed to every day - fear, violence, death and devastation. We are wrong to shield them from realities that can make them strong, thoughtful citizens. Show them. Give them a history lesson. Give them courage. Surely we can do that.