Mahatma Gandhi’s civil disobedience was aimed at the unjust British, not his fellow citizens. He was willing to pay the penalty. In the same way, the anti-war crowd ought to have carried their grievances to the streets of Baghdad — to the abuser, there to suffer Saddam’s punishment for civil obedience.

What made those peace lovers so different and why did they see the fiend as the friend and their redeemer as the enemy? For anyone to take an extreme anti-war stance, they need to be a betrayer or an unstable psychotic.

To be “anti-war” is to be at “peace” with those in the business of advancing war through conflict. It should be obvious that appeasers, rather than being the moral equivalent of peacemakers, are instead the instruments of tyrants.

Because it is far easier to screw a mind than unscrew it, this nation needs to take a serious look at the recent story of Elizabeth Smart and her post-traumatic stress experience. We need to grasp the principle behind the Stockholm syndrome and how terrorists may succeed in using similar stress methods to demoralize Americans into submission as they have done most of the world.  

The harm done by any domestic or political beast is almost impossible to cure. Loyal friends, family and heroes become their enemies. Furthermore, any effort to provide help tends to drive them deeper into the arms of their reassuring corrupters, even though they may be dead phantoms or even just a memory of some distant event.

Dictatorships cannot survive without the programmed loyalties of the multitudes — especially those abused as children. Born into toxic environments and cultures, they can hardly avoid falling under the compulsion to play one of two roles, the coward or the bully, henceforth to recognize no allegiance other than to that of their violators. 

The left has done its best to ensure this eventuality, to prepare our children for such roles that might well serve a future dictatorship. Therefore, it is our duty to recognize this possibility and sound the clarion call to the multitude of abused Americans presently exploited by domestic and foreign intellectuals. 

The roles of the oppressor and the oppressed tend to pass from generation to generation so that the sickest member often rules the family. We struggle or try to flee from such tyranny, only to find we are in similar relationships elsewhere. During World War II, many fled from Nazi oppression into Soviet oppression — ‘out of the frying pan into the fire,’ so to speak.

Jewish survivors of the Nazi death camps often brought the nature of the cruel tyrant home with them, only to demoralize their own offspring. Bully parents tend to replicate themselves through their offspring, providing only the miserable choice of being either a bully or a coward. 

"The roles of the oppressor and the oppressed tend to pass from generation to generation"

It should not be surprising, then, to find generations of people living like animals in the extremes of humanity: angry toward parents, church and country, with vile affections toward those who cater to their various dissatisfactions.

The abduction and recovery of kidnap victim Elizabeth Smart has once again caused us to think about the unthinkable: the use of terror to demoralize this nation into submission. We found it hard to believe that a 14-year-old girl could come under the spell of an apparently unsophisticated, brutal street derelict.

Perhaps she could not walk away when she had the opportunity. Few people possess the strength of character needed to resist the programming of a very determined brainwasher. 

In one way or another, most of us are cultural victims of some subtle form of post-traumatic stress disorder, also known as the Stockholm syndrome. Like Elizabeth, we may not be able to see that we are not who we think we are, that our thoughts and feelings are not our own.

Violent or soft tyrannical events tend to set us up for lifelong roles, of being unconsciously too strong before the weak, and much too submissive before the willful. If it is true that freedom gives every man the right to become his own dictator, then freedom cannot last long. 

Before you have finished reading, it may dawn on you (don’t be frightened) that you have indeed come from a home or circumstance ruled by its most willful and sickest member and consequently have taken on that person’s identity. No tyrant worth his salt will allow any child to be true to himself or herself.

If anyone is to survive family, school or sexual abuse, it will be through character strength and in spite of tribulation. Mysteriously, a small percentage will always manage to mature beyond their sufferings to become solid sovereign citizens.

Unfortunately, most children never mature beyond their childhood roles of being bullies or cowards. There are not enough psychiatrists or psychologists in the world with sufficient knowledge to fix so many minds and broken spirits.

All too often, it is authorities in the guise of doctor or priest or psychologist who become the cause of such suffering or even worse, the “cure.”