Posted on 09/11/2012 10:58:09 AM PDT by Tenacious 1
"Daddy why do they Hate Us?"
"Sweetie, they hate us because we allow you to go to school. They hate us because your Mother drives a vehicle, in public without a scarf over her head...."
This was how the conversation started with my daughter last evening as we studied for Social Studies test about American Indians and watched some 9/11 tribute on TV. I was explaining the cultural divide that caused the violence between colonists/Americans and native Indians.
Native Indians didn't have written language. They couldn't read and had many different spoken languages. They constantly fought with other tribes over territories that had no signs, treaties or known boundaries. Different tribes often, unkowingly claimed the same territories as their own and fought over them. 1,500 Native Indians might claim thousands of square miles as their territory without having anyway for anyone to know where it was. Settlers come along and unkowningly build houses and farms on those lands and were sometimes slaughtered by Indians without knowing why. So the explanation of military outposts, treaties and the development of Indian Reservations went. The root cause was a cultural divide that left no equitable compromise. There was nobody to blame for the settlers "stealing" the Indian's land. We offered them money but they couldn't eat it, plant it or wear it and that confused us. They just wanted to keep their land and for settlers to stop having kids and moving into their territories. We didn't have enough in common to negotiate a compromise with them and technology won over the primative Indians."
That's when she inexplicably asked the question, "Why do those people hate Americans today (pointing to Muslim terrorist flying planes into buildings)?"
I told her:
"Hon, it's the same reason I just explained to you about the American Indians. They hate us and want to kill us because we are so different than they are. There is nothing of common value that we share on which to start a compromise.
They want us to be Muslim and follow their laws. The basis of everything they want goes against everything our country was founded upon. We believe in freedom and equality for all, including religion. They believe our government should force all people to be Muslim and worship Alah. They don't want Mom to be able to drive a vehicle or be by herself in public. They don't think you should go to school. They want you and your mother to always sit in the back seat and wear sheets over your face and body. They don't want you to be able to vote. And they think it should be illegal to eat pork.
Since they are willing to kill any American as part of their religion and belief, we had to go kill them in their own country. They proved that they are dangerous and could kill innocent Americans, women and children alike in our own country. We had to go do something about it and are still working to protect ourselves today."
She is pretty smart and says, "Is that why Iran wants to kill Israel too?" to which I said, "Yes. Basically that is it."
We went back to studying after she paused, looked at me and said, "People will always be at war somewhere in the world won't they."
I am proud of my daughter and deeply saddened at this thought. That such a young mind comes to the harsh realization of the human condition at such an early age is demoralizing. If only we had more American's as wise as this 5th grader.
I had a conversation like that this morning when my 9 year old son and I were discussing 9/11, which was for him the first time he’d heard of the event.
It is extremely difficult to describe that kind of hate to someone so young and innocent. I think you did a super job in your attempt with your daughter.
I have to share this with my 11 year old daughter.
Islamic radicals hate us for the same reason the Communists did - not for reasons if ideology or of religion, economics, race or ethnicity, but simply because we’re in their way. That’s it.
They hate us, because we’re not Muslims. They would hate us, even if we had social customs like theirs. They would hate us, whether we were moral or not.
You should be proud of her and yourself - you explained it beautifully. I plan on sharing this with my son - thank you.
Remembering 9/11 today - always hard to see the suffering of the families left behind....
Thank you for the kind words.
I was still thinking about it when I came to work this morning and thought FReepers might best appreciate and relate to the heartfelt sentiments.
Good luck and God Bless to you and yours.
Great, simple, explanations of the conflicts with both Indians and Muslims. Your daughter is lucky.
I agree with your remarks. Great job of teaching.
Hate develops from envy, which develops from vanity/pride. People hate and envy because they think too highly of themselves. On the plus side, this defect of human nature is the source of a special environmental pressure that drives human genetic and cultural evolution at high speed. Those that hate tend to end up getting removed from the gene pool. Unfortunately the vanity bell curve spontaneously reforms with one half of people envying the other half, so the cycle repeats endlessly at a self-regulating pace.
"Sweetie, they hate us because we allow you to go to school at home. They hate us because your Mother drives an SUV to the science center, music lessons, youth orchestra, drama production, chess club, awana, bible study, AzOSA, vollyball, shinkendo lessons, karate and fencing lessons, writers club and writers co-op, the zoo, latin and greek lessons, computers science lessons, the arboritum, gardening club, john birch society, ... instead of to public school."
Really? That’s what you would have told an 11 year old? Hmmm.
Good job.
No need to be obtuse. The greater threat today is not resistance to inclusion by [native] minorities. The left, which champions every disenfranchised group to increase its power, treats conservative christians [overwhelmingly homeschoolers] as occupying aliens.
11-year-old homeschoolers are surprised when neighborhood children consider them strange. And are quite frankly puzzled that they [govt schoolers] act cliquish, rude, and generally unkind toward them [homeschoolers]. It isnt surprising since home-taught children have far more [positive] socialization opportunities to develop mature behaviors. I could relate to the air of disappointment so effectively expressed by the posting/article.
My observation is this which paralllels the topic presented—Yet another uncivilized subculture resenting and despising those freely blessed and capitalizing on the abundant choices that freedom offers. So sad.
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