What's Really Shocking

It's 6:00 in the morning. I don't go to work until 9 most days, so I'm not usually up this early. But I couldn't sleep well. The thing is, I saw people expressing opinions yesterday that are weighing on my mind. First, I saw a picture of a sign in front of a pizza joint in my home state of Arkansas. It said "Leviticus 20:13. Why don't we listen?" Now, here's what that verse actually says.

If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads."

Well, that seems clear enough. This pizza place, called Heavenly Pizza Pies, seems to be calling for the killing of gay people, or at least gay men.* When there was an outcry, they took the sign down and claimed they were saying no such thing. Maybe they didn't mean it that way. I don't know. Here's the response that they posted on Facebook:

We as a company don't support same sex marriage, but we still care for everyone and would do anything to help. We posted a Bold Verse out of God's word, something that as a nation we have forgotten. As a nation we have taken God out of schools, we have taken prayer out of school and the work place, and now we take another one of God's law and throw it away. We will stand bold in honoring God's word in and out of the work place. If you were upset with this verse, remember its God's word, we will all stand before him in judgement.

What are we to make of people posting a sign like that? Honestly, I doubt they really want to see gay people killed, but you never know with some people. One thing we can conclude with confidence is that they're being extremely selective about which parts of Leviticus to take seriously. I mean, this is a pizza place--I'm pretty sure they put sausage, pepperoni, and ham on their pizzas, and all those things are made from pork. Leviticus 11:7-8 clearly says pigs are unclean and not to be eaten. Their carcasses aren't even to be touched, which, it has been often pointed out, would seem to rule out playing football with an actual pigskin.

When questioned, people say such dietary restrictions are part of the Old Covenant, and that the New Covenant makes them unnecessary. But those same people point to the verses about homosexuality in Leviticus and say they still hold. Why? What are their criteria for deciding which parts of the Bible are still valid and which are no longer applicable? I ask this question all the time, because I would really like to know, but I never get a clear answer. Usually I get no answer at all, even though I think I usually succeed in asking nicely. Apparently the question is gauche.

Seeing the picture of this sign in my home state disturbed me enough, though I can't say it surprised me. But what continued to disturb me were other things I saw people saying on the same topic, or in response to it. One woman, in a thread unrelated to the pizza joint sign, also mentioned the parts of the Old Testament that talk about killing gays. She wasn't exactly stating her approval, but she was mentioning it in support of her contention that the Bible says homosexuality is wrong. In a thread about the sign, a guy told me that homosexuality is clearly wrong according to the Bible, and cited Genesis 2:18, where God decides to create women:

The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.

This guy was apparently thinking of a different translation, and used the word "worker" instead of helper. Yes, worker. So, here's someone defending the idea that homosexuality is bad, by citing a verse saying women were created almost as an afterthought, to be "workers" for men. I'll admit, I found this kind of upsetting. What made it worse is that he seemed to be a decent guy, who honestly seemed to be trying to do what is right, based on his religion (he thought the pizza place sign was a bad thing, for example).

So I pointed out that he's deciding to how to judge one fraction of the human race (homosexuals), based on his interpretation of a text that says half the human race were created as helpers for the other half. Deciding how to treat that large a percentage of humankind is a pretty serious step to take, morally speaking. And he's doing it based on Genesis, the same book that tells us a snake talked, that people lived hundreds of years, and that Noah got two of every species on earth onto a boat (did he go to the Andes to get llamas? What about plants?).

Anyway, I asked to consider the possibility that the Bible is a book written by members of an ancient tribe living in a violent, sexist, superstitious time. Yes, it does say homosexuality is wrong, that homosexuals should be killed (along with suspected witches and children who curse their parents), and it also says that women were created to be "helpers". And when it does, it's wrong. And when people base their behavior toward women, gays, and others based on a literal interpretation of those verses, they are wrong, and perpetuate the unbelievable injustice that's characterized most of human history--millions of lives lost and wasted, for thousands of years, based on parts of the Bible that are mostly myth or myth-based ritual.

This suggestion was apparently out of bounds. Though I tried hard to be civil, I was the bad guy for saying such things. The man I was debating got mad, and a woman chimed in to say she felt sorry for me and would pray for me. Neither of them seemed at all shocked by Bible verses talking about killing gays, or describing women as "helpers" by design, even though one of them was a woman. Yet they were shocked by me saying those passages should be rejected as the writings of an ancient people who believed the earth was flat.

What kind of world are we living in when a large percentage of people still look at Iron Age documents about killing people, or treating women as second class citizens (because of a story involving their creation from a man's rib) and they aren't shocked by them? Not only are they not shocked, but they believe them and live their lives by them. What they do find shocking is someone questioning those verses. That strikes me as very, very twisted, especially since many of them really are trying to do the right thing. It's just that they're basing their judgement of what's right on very questionable, hard to interpret sources.

Please don't get me wrong. This may be a screed, but it's not an anti-Christian screed--many of the people I admire most are Christians. It's a screed against discrimination based on Biblical literalism. Taking these writings as straightforward guides to behavior is very, very hurtful. The guy I was debating claimed that the Bible verse about killing gays should be interpreted to mean they would be suffer "eternal death" (Hell) not earthly death. That's also hurtful, but I also think he's wrong about the interpretation. I think that verse means exactly what it says, and that it's surely caused untold numbers of violent deaths. Who knows how many people were stoned to death because of that verse, or others like it? It says what it says, and it's wrong.

Obviously, I have a big problem with this kind of fundamentalism. But I have a far bigger problem when its practitioners try to write their Old Testament views of morality into law. If people want to believe these things, that's their right. I think they're wrong and hurtful beliefs, but I'm not going to try to force them to change. That's not the kind of country we live in. But I am going to keep telling them they don't get to force that view of morality on me or anyone else. They were allowed to do so for millennia, and that needs to end. Soon.

Does that mean laws should never enforce moral codes of any kind? Certainly not. Justice Antonin Scalia once asked, if he shouldn't say homosexuality should be illegal, whether he could still say murder should be illegal. Of course he should! Murder clearly hurts people, and you don't need to appeal to any religious text or supernatural entity to see that. Murder, rape, theft, perjury, and dozens of other things are clearly hurtful for obvious, real-world reasons, and should of course be illegal. But ideas about what is wrong based on religion or the supernatural are very debatable, and therefore shouldn't be written into law, especially if not everyone in the country subscribes to that religion. If you want to follow additional moral rules, based on religion and beyond the proper scope of law, that's your prerogative. But I don't see why you should be able to force anyone else to. If you want to tell gays they don't get to have the same right--to love and marry another adult--that you have, you need to realize that you are denying them something most people consider an essential part of a happy life. You'd better have ironclad proof that homosexuality is wrong and damaging, and for reasons that don't appeal to the supernatural. I've never seen any such proof.

And if you want to go on thinking that homosexuality is bad, or that women are "helpers", then that's your right. If you want to quote Bible verses saying homosexuals should be killed, I guess that's your right too, as much as it makes my lip curl to hear it. But please, please ask yourself this: Which is more shocking? People questioning Bible verses that promote such ideas, or the verses themselves?

______________________________________________________________

* I hate that I feel like I need to mention this, but since I'm 41 and single, people will wonder, and that will distract from the point I'm trying to make. I'm straight. I'm not the bravest guy, but I like to think that if I were gay I would have had the guts to come out years ago. This issue is important to me because I have a lot of gay friends I love, and I hate seeing injustice, especially when it's justified with such dubious reasoning.

"Unnatural Acts" and the Sins of Sodom: Some Bad Arguments against Homosexuality

In the last few days, I've run into people using two of the most common arguments against homosexuality: saying it's unnatural, and pointing to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Both arguments are still quite common, and a whole bunch of people think they give them a license to tell others who they can love and marry. It seems to me that an argument better be pretty good if you're going to use it to tell other people how they can live their life. And neither of these arguments come close.

First, the "unnatural" claim (I'm going to leave aside the obvious point that homosexuality might not be unnatural). Religious and non-religious people are always using the "Natural = Good/Unnatural = Bad" argument, sometimes called the Appeal to Nature argument, to divide the world between good things and bad things. Up to a point, this makes some sense. For example, we evolved to eat a certain kind of food, which is derived almost exclusively from other living things. That means it would be unnatural to try to eat, say, a handful of asbestos fibers. In this case, unnatural is bad, because our bodies aren't equipped to eat asbestos. So, what's natural/unnatural often correlates with what's good/bad. But the correlation is far from perfect. What's natural isn't necessarily good, and what's unnatural isn't necessarily bad. Arsenic, bubonic plague, tornadoes, and brain-eating amoebas are all perfectly natural. Come to think of it, so is asbestos. Some common, natural animal behaviors include infanticide, forced copulation, internal parasitism, and eating prey while it is still alive and kicking. Unnatural things include running water, electrical appliances, C-sections that save the lives of mothers and babies, and--older male readers take note--Viagra.

People are right to admire nature's beauty and harmony, because it has both of those things in spades. And since we evolved to live in a certain kind of natural world, we disregard what is natural for us at some peril. But nature also has an enormous amount of death, strife, and pain. So it's also perilous to assume that what is natural is good, and what is unnatural is bad. Whether something is natural or not should be one of many considerations in deciding what is good or bad, and not an absolute one. That's because it's not the main point, when it comes to most moral arguments. Our main concern is not whether something is natural or unnatural, but whether it is good or bad. And what that really means, I think, is: does it improve the welfare of conscious beings, or decrease it?

The real question when deciding whether something like homosexuality is immoral is: "Does it do harm?" I don't think it does. Sure, gay people often don't reproduce, but in a world that went from 6 to 7 billion people in 13 years, I don't think that's a bad thing. There's no shortage of people on this planet. Even if you could clearly show that homosexuality caused harm in some way, well, heterosexuality causes quite a few problems itself. Besides, it would have to be something pretty harmful to justify telling people that they have to abstain from sex and love--which most people consider among the most important things in life--or try to force themselves to be heterosexual. I don't know about you, but can't imagine changing my sexual orientation through sheer force of will. Maybe some of my fellow heterosexuals can (that would explain how so many of them can claim homosexuality is a choice, I guess). In any case, my point is that you can't say homosexuality is wrong simply by saying it's unnatural. What's unnatural isn't necessarily wrong, and what's natural isn't necessarily right.

Now, over to Sodom and Gomorrah. Obviously, the word "sodomy" comes from Sodom, one of the Biblical "Cities on the Plain" that may have existed along the Jordan River plain, north of the Dead Sea (archaeologists argue about whether it ever existed or not). In the book of Genesis, Abraham and his nephew Lot part ways amiably, because their herds have grown too large for the land to support both of them. Lot goes to Sodom, a city whose people were said to be "wicked, great sinners against the Lord". God soon tells Abraham that he intends to destroy Sodom for its sinfulness. Abraham begs him to spare it if he can find 50 righteous men in the city. God agrees, and then Abraham talks him down to ten. But apparently there aren't ten righteous men in Sodom, because God sends two "men" (usually interpreted as angels) to destroy it. The angels meet Lot, who invites them into his home.

That's when things turn nasty. The men of Sodom gather around outside Lot's house and demand that he hand over the angels so that they may "know" them (presumably in the Biblical sense). Lot refuses, and instead offers his two virgin daughters to the mob, to "do to them as you please". The mob refuses and tries to force their way in, and the angels strike them blind. Then they tell Lot to flee the city with his family, and not look back. But his wife does look back, and is turned into a pillar of salt (the area has naturally occurring pillars of salt, which is probably the basis for this part of the story). Then the Lord rains fire and brimstone down on Sodom, Gomorrah, and most of the other cities on the plain. Later, Lot's daughters get him drunk and have sex with him, and have his children.

For over two thousand years, up to this day, this story has been interpreted as a cautionary tale about the evils of homosexuality and the destruction that the Lord will visit on societies that allow it. But wait a just a minute here. Here we have a story where the main character, Lot, is held up as one of the only righteous men in the wicked city. A man who offers his daughters to an angry mob, to be raped, and later on bears children with those same daughters. Should we really look to this tale as a guide to morality? Nobody looks very moral in this story to me. Even God seems needlessly harsh (as he often does in the Old Testament). Did Lot's wife really deserve to be turned to salt? What kind of moral lesson is this tale, anyway?

Still, it's clear that the inhabitants of Sodom were being pretty awful. If there is such a thing as angels, I think we can all agree that gang-raping them is a bad thing. But it's strange that what people remember as being bad in the story is the homosexuality, not the coercion and attempted rape. Those things, unlike homosexuality, are clearly bad because they hurt people. Homosexuality is very different. Homosexual relationships between consenting adults don't seem to hurt people (or they wouldn't if others wouldn't freak out so much about them). What kind of skewed sense of morality causes people to read this story, and remember homosexuality as the worst behavior in it?

Now, there are going to be people reading this who think, "Well, maybe homosexuality isn't as bad as the other stuff in the story, but it's still bad, and that's one point of the story". Maybe that's one way the author of the story intended it.  I wouldn't be surprised, but then, he was a member of a violent, sexist, and superstitious society. Why should we put so much stock in his opinion? Haven't we learned anything about morality in the last 2500 years or so? Maybe this is one of those things in the Bible that nobody should take seriously as a guide to morality. You can't deny that there are such passages, and I don't care how religious you are. Unless, for example, you're prepared to agree that if someone rapes your daughter, the right thing to do is marry her to him, as Deuteronomy 22:25 commands. I'm pretty sure you aren't going to go for that, even if you claim to believe the Bible is literally true and inerrant. It's a bad rule. Similarly, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is simply a bad moral lesson.

But there are always people who love to denounce others, especially if they think they might be enjoying themselves. I don't understand this impulse. It seems to me that people make a terrible mistake when they think of morality in negative terms, as a list of  "THINGS YOU SHOULD NOT DO". Morality isn't about keeping people from enjoying life, or it shouldn't be. In fact, the whole point of morality, as far as I'm concerned, is to make life worth living for as many people as possible. Morality is about making life better, not worse. But, let me be clear. I'm not advocating the kind of simplistic utilitarianism that prescribes doing whatever causes the most total benefit, on average. I don't think, for example, that it's right to kill and harvest one person's organs to save the lives of 5 others.  Individual rights are important. But rights aren't important in and of themselves. They're important because respecting people's rights will make life better in the long run.

Some religious people might think morality is about doing what God wants us to do, regardless of our happiness. But wouldn't a good God want us to do what makes life good (if not in this life, at least in the next one?). I suppose you could say we are a part of God's big plan, and that plan may not include our individual happiness. To which I would respond: prove it. If you want to base your morality on arguable theological ideas, that's your prerogative, but I don't think it gives you the right to impose it on others. The only certain criteria for a morally bad act--certain enough that the act should be outlawed--is that it clearly hurts people.

I'm writing this because I have a lot of gay friends, and I hate seeing them hurt by discriminatory laws and attitudes based on shaky ideas of morality, like simple-minded appeals to nature or morally questionable Bible stories. If you want to impose your morals on other people, to the detriment of their happiness, you better be able to make an airtight argument that meddling in their lives is morally justified. When it comes to homosexuality, I've never seen an argument that comes close. My larger point, however, is about the whole reason for having morals. A moral code that doesn't actually make life better is a moral code that makes no sense (alas, it's also a moral code that's extremely common). What makes something bad is not that it's unnatural, or that it violates some arbitrary rule from God, but that it causes harm and makes life worse. If it doesn't do those things, then I just can't see how it's bad.

The Consent of the Governed: Why Americans Should Care About Syria

A few months ago, I went to Philadelphia for a library conference. I had some free time, so I went to Independence Hall and toured the room where both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were signed. At the front of the room was George Washington's chair; the very chair he sat in over 200 years ago while presiding over the constitutional debates. I stood and stared at the back of that chair, where there is a carving of the sun on the horizon.  I had just read that all through the debates, an aging Benjamin Franklin pondered that same sun, wondering whether it was rising or setting. When the delegates finally resolved their differences, and were signing the Constitution, he remarked that he was glad to see it was a rising sun.

I found this pretty awe-inspiring. So of course, I took a picture of the room and posted it on Facebook. But then, my friend Nora made a comment on the picture that was as powerful to me as standing in that room. “Amazing," she said, "makes me tear up actually considering events in Syria." You see, Nora grew up in the United States, but her family is from Syria, a country currently in the midst of its own struggle for freedom from tyranny. The Assad regime is responding to this movement by killing its own citizens; committing atrocities like sending out snipers to shoot children and pregnant women. Nora's grandfather was killed by that regime years ago, and she still has a grandmother and other family there. So far, over 24,000 people have been killed in Syria, many of them non-combatants, and many more have been detained and tortured, or have fled as refugees. It is the most deadly conflict going on in the world today, and much of the killing is deliberate, cold-blooded targeting of civilians by their own government.

Reading her comment, I realized that Nora knows better than most other Americans how great it is to live in a country free from this sort of tyranny. Most of us here are so accustomed to publicly disagreeing with our leaders that we take it for granted, rarely stopping to think how lucky we are. We don't have to worry that armed men will come for us in the night for speaking our minds. Nora knows exactly how lucky we are, because her family is from a place where they do.

Despite the horrors going on right now in Syria, many Americans don't think about the situation there very much. It's all too easy to forget about things we don't see on a daily basis; things that don't effect us personally. If you don't know anyone from Syria, the situation may seem remote and abstract. I'm not proud of this, but I admit I think about it more because I know Nora. She and her family are very real to me. I met them when I first moved to Louisiana, and needed a place to stay while I looked for an apartment. Nora had placed an ad for someone to sublet their apartment for six weeks. Her husband was a medical student at the time, and they were going to Miami while he did a medical rotation there. It was exactly what I was looking for. On my first night in town they asked me to sleep in their living room, even though they had barely met me. I did.  Later on, I got to know them. Nora is a beautiful, kindhearted woman, and her husband Luke is an incredibly nice guy from Canada. They have a two-year-old daughter who is honestly one of the most adorable children I've ever seen, with big dark eyes and curly brown hair. They're a lovely, intelligent family.  I hear Nora tell me about her grandfather, and think about what might have become of her if her father had never gotten out of Syria. I read about the children being targeted by snipers, and think about her beautiful little girl. What if she had been born there?

I'd like to ask you to put yourself in my shoes for a while. Imagine that you know a family like Nora's.  They aren't abstractions to you, but a real, flesh-and-blood family of bright, fun people who invite you over for dinner. You've laughed with them, played with their little girl, and hugged them all goodnight. Think about Nora's reaction to my picture of Independence Hall; how inspired she was by the American struggle for freedom, and her hopes that the Syrian people will attain such freedoms. Now ask yourself this: should we Americans should do more to help people in countries like Syria gain freedom from tyranny? I absolutely think we should. I think we should take another look at the Declaration of Independence, and realize that it promotes principles that should apply not just to Americans, but to all people. If you're skeptical about this, let's take a look at what it actually says.

Universal Principles in the Declaration of Independence

The Declaration was written in part to explain to the rest of the world why the American colonies were separating from British rule. It states that when people are separating from their previous government,

a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. 

The Declaration then begins setting out these causes, in some of the most famous and inspiring lines ever written: 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Of course, when the Declaration was written, it really did mean all men, and not even all men, but all white men. Women and minorities were not considered equal. But the ideas behind the Declaration proved, over time, to be more powerful than the prejudices of the men who wrote it. Today we can see the document as meaning that all people are endowed with equal rights. Notice it doesn't just say “all Americans”. The Declaration is a statement of universal principles...more universal, perhaps, than its creators were immediately comfortable with, but that's the danger of having such powerful ideas. They outlive their creators. They outgrow their creators.

Now consider the next lines:

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

In other words, governments exist for the purpose of ensuring the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The only just government is one whose aim is to do that. If it consistently fails, then its citizens have every right to abolish it and try to create one that does. Of course, the founders realized that doing so is an extreme measure, and only justified in extreme circumstances:

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Abuses and Despotism

Things need to be pretty unbearable to justify a people rising up in revolution.  Which brings us back to Syria.  If you agree that the Declaration should be interpreted as stating universal principles--principles which should apply to all people around the world--then the next question is this: are the abuses by the Syrian government egregious enough to warrant the Syrian people rising up to overthrow it? The answer: absolutely. If you aren't already convinced of this, consider the video I'm posting below. Please read the description, and then decide whether you want to watch it. It is graphic and heartbreaking--a shocking record of real evil. You may want to just read the description, but please take the time to do that. As awful as it is, it shows the kind of thing that is happening, right now, to real people.

Here's the background: on August 25, after the Syrian government shelled the town of Daraya for five days, troops entered and began killing people--men, women, and children--often in close-range executions.  The video shows what happened next.  A pretty female reporter for the news channel Al-Dunya (private, but pro-Assad) walks onto a street littered with dead people and starts talking about how "terrorists" killed them; in the name of "freedom", she sneers.  After the cameras linger on bloody images of dead bodies, she approaches an old woman who has been shot several times.  She says, "Here is a woman still clinging to life.  We'll talk to her, and we will hear--and you will hear--what happened to her."  Before the woman gets any medical attention, she is interviewed by the reporter, who is trying to get her to say that rebels shot her. She says she doesn't know who did it, and worries aloud about what happened to her children. The reporter then interviews a woman who claims the Syrian army saved them from rebel forces.  In other footage, men say the same thing, but then say, "Nobody forced us to say this". They are, of course, surrounded by soldiers. The reporter goes on to interview a little girl in the back of a cart, lying between her wounded brother and her dead mother.  The traumatized child is still running her hands over her mother's body.  The camera lingers on a gunshot wound in the head of a dead toddler lying on the cart, then the reporter puts the microphone in the little girl's face and says, "Who is this beside you?"  The little girls says, "My mommy."  The video ends with footage of a mother lying on top of her child, still in the position of trying to shield him with her body.  But he is dead too.

To ensure that I won't be accused of stacking the cards here, I will tell you now that there are people other than the Assad regime saying that rebel forces killed these people, or that they were killed in some sort of botched prisoner exchange.  But I don't believe it. These people clearly weren't prisoners.  They were driving, riding motorcycles, and walking when they were attacked.  Why would small children have been prisoners? Also, it doesn't appear that they were caught in the crossfire of battle, because many of their wounds are too accurate, too precise.  The gunmen had time to take aim. It's clear that the Syrian army indiscriminately shelled the town for days, and the regime has a long history of murdering its citizens.  Human Rights Watch has actually documented the regime offering bread to civilians, and then opening fire on people in the breadlines.  Finally, the absolute callousness of the reporter in the pro-Assad video speaks for itself.  She is far more interested in glorifying the Assad regime than in the lives of the people she interviews, whom she treats like stage props. Most likely, she entered Daraya with, or just after, Syrian forces or pro-Assad militias, who then murdered civilians.  Then she calmly interviewed the survivors, some of whom were terrified into saying what she wanted them to say. I don't use the word "evil" lightly.  But this is evil.

What Can Be Done?

Based on this video, and numerous other reports of atrocities, it's abundantly clear the Assad regime needs to go. It's a government of oppression and murder; and should by all rights be replaced with a Syrian government of the people, by the people, and for the people. But here, of course, another question arises: What should Americans do to help? How do we know this government won't be replaced by a worse one (unlikely), or one that will bring more instability into an already volatile region (not as unlikely)? We don't, of course. The situation in Syria is a diplomatic nightmare, and that has helped perpetuate the tragedy. The Syrian regime has been a powerful player in Middle Eastern politics for a long time. It has dominated the government of Lebanon, and is closely allied with Iran. Not only that, but it has close ties to Russia and China, who have used their veto power in the UN Security Council to prevent the UN from taking any effective action to stop the killing. The Free Syrian Army, like any revolutionary army, has some unsavory elements, and has committed misdeeds of its own (though nothing like the massive and systematic atrocities of the Syrian government). Any good solution, then, will have to ensure that the new government in Syria doesn't start committing its own abuses.

It's an incredibly complex situation, and I'm abundantly unqualified to recommend concrete steps to solve it. I'm simply trying to convince you that the situation is tragic, and that we should care. We are lucky enough to have lived in a country that has implemented the principles in our Declaration of Independence well enough to prosper and avoid tyranny for over 200 years. I believe we should find a way--as Americans and as human beings--to help implement real international enforcement of these principles. Governments exist to ensure people their rights, and if they fail, they forfeit their right to govern. It's a shame upon humankind that we haven't learned to cooperate well enough to remove tyrants like Assad before they kill so many people. We can do better.  We should do better.

If you've read this far, you may be thinking of objections to my argument. That's fine, but let me make sure I'm making my actual argument clear, so I'm not misunderstood. I'm not saying Americans should pay more attention to problems in other countries than to problems here; nor am I saying we need an all-powerful world government. I'm saying we need more global compassion, and more effective global laws against human rights abuses. Really, any government that deserves to exist should welcome the idea of a fair, enforceable international law that states that if it abuses the rights of its citizens, it has to go. As long as such laws are fairly applied (and I know that's a big if) then no just government has anything to fear from them.  That may sound uncomfortably like the argument some make against people's right to privacy, but the difference is that governments aren't people.  Governments themselves don't have rights.  People do.

These are big, abstract ideas, and those can only go so far. To say the situation in Syria is tragic, and that we should care more and work toward better international laws—that's all fine, but it won't do the people of Syria any immediate good. So what will? As I said, I'm not qualified to answer that question. So I asked my friend Nora. I've reprinted her response below. Please...give it a minute of your time. Nora helped start an organization called the FREE-Syria Foundation, dedicated to helping people hurt by the conflict in Syria.  She recently met with Robert Ford, the American ambassador to Syria, to discuss FREE-Syria's efforts; and she is hoping to travel to Turkey to help improve conditions in refugee camps.  FREE-Syria's activities are entirely non-violent and humanitarian. The more support they get, the more good they will be able to do.  Once again, the situation in Syria is the deadliest in the world right now.  The Syrian people need to see their own rising sun, and Nora is one of many dedicated people working hard to ensure that they do.

Nora's Response:

I think caring about the issue is a huge first step, and seeking more information is tremendously important. There's a lot out there, but I can be better about posting news about what's going on to help provide more information.

- Spreading the knowledge, educating others, and raising awareness is another thing you can do—through social media like Facebook and Twitter--since the media are still not providing enough coverage about what's going on. 


- You can also contact local media outlets in your areas to ask them to cover it more.

- Contact your representatives and congressmen to see where they stand on the issue and what they're doing about it. Maybe even educate them about it if they're not involved.

- You can try to find your local Syrian community and see what events they have: sit-ins, charity events, etc.

- As far as donations, I recommend the Free-Syria Foundation, which I am directly involved with. Our goals are humanitarian relief, education, and empowerment of women. We have very little overhead, and our main focus is on children and women. We are registered in the US, very trusted, and have no religious/sectarian affiliations. 


____________________________________________________________
Crackdown Toll Seen as Syrians Bury Hundreds
Syria: The Story of the Conflict
Syria Government Attacking Bread Lines