Like any other candidate, I’ll begin by quoting someone with a better track record than myself and hope some of the luster rubs off.

St. Augustine wrote, "if babies are innocent, it is not for lack of will to do harm, but for lack of strength."  The observation is almost superfluous today: lack of strength isn’t much of an obstacle when a grade-schooler can fit a nine-millimeter in his knapsack, and the will to do harm hasn’t gone away.  With every new tragedy we wring our hands and gnash our teeth and put on sackcloth and ashes, we vow to end the bloodshed, we demand that it end, our political leaders promise to end it, and then we go back to whatever it is we do when we’re not choking on moral outrage.

Some of us blame the NRA, as lately personified by Charlton Heston; some find fault with Hollywood.  We look to them for solutions.  But I believe the answer lies not with our stars, that we are brutes, but with our history.  Thucydides, Herodotus, Machiavelli, Gibbon, Prescott, Churchill: our species has provided itself with a certain class of specialist, most of whom will be familiar to readers of this peculiar almanac.   Historians reveal us to ourselves with an honesty that is not often found in either the promotional material of the NRA or the pyrotechnic fabulism of Hollywood.

There is not much comfort to be drawn from their honesty.

Since the dawn of civilization, human history has been a violent and bloody parade of horrors.  (Noted German syphilitic Friedrich Nietzsche observed that human history was "the refutation by example of a moral world order.")  In the very earliest pages of the very earliest books to have survived, Cain kills Abel, Sri Krishna urges Arjuna to kill his relatives, heroes dismember one another on the fields of Troy.   Empires rise and fall on the backs of their soldiers.  Peace is won with blood.  In the whole vast human saga, there has only been one long and protracted period of relative peace among the major powers of the dominant civilizations.  It was a period that came, not surprisingly, after some of the bleakest and bloodiest chapters in our history.  We’re living in that period.

What brought us this relative peace?  Look to history.  Democracy?   Think Robespierre and Danton.  Think Weimar.  Fraternity? T hink Aryan purity.  Think ethnic cleansing.  Spirituality?  Think Crusades.   Think Inquisition.  Technology?  Well, it’s true that almost every technological advance has fostered an improvement in our ability to kill one another.   But take that reasoning to its extreme, acknowledge that we have at last perfected that ability, that we’ve enabled ourselves to wipe out whole nations by remote control, and the truth pours forth.  One thing, and one thing only, has stabilized the world for the past half century, and that thing is a big metal hull containing a device that, when triggered, can reduce an entire city to smoldering ruin.

That thing is the bomb.  In its shadow, peace prospers.

If we want to save our children—and we all want to save our children—we have to face up to the horror of ourselves.  We must be honest enough to acknowledge that St. Augustine was right, and that so long as children have the means, they will always have the will to do harm.  They will do so not because they are some strange and terrible new breed of children, but because they are exactly like each and every one of us that came before them, the only difference being that they’re better armed.

If we truly want to save our children, we can.  We need only follow the example provided by history.  We must give them nuclear weapons.

As the presidential candidate for the Moron Party, I promise to do just that.

As we continue de-escalating from the cold war, and dismantling the thousands and thousands of warheads manufactured at its peak, we can redistribute them to our nation’s primary schools.  Two of them to each to school, secretly given to two different sixth-graders.  We have seen what mutually assured destruction can do on the geopolitical stage: imagine what wonders it could work in the schoolyard!

What child would dare to bring a mere pistol to school—a machine gun, a grenade, a flame-thrower, even a rocket launcher—after getting a note like this in homeroom:

"Jimmy’s got the bomb.  Pass it on."

We can make our schools safe again.  We only need the resolve.

And a little plutonium.

These Weeks in History

May 1 is recognized as May Day pretty much everywhere but the United States, Canada, and South Africa.  Modern May Day celebrations throughout the world typically feature great throngs of people, brightly colored signs and banners, and a whole lot of tear gas.   The holiday has its root in the American labor movement of the 1880s, specifically the Haymarket tragedy of 1886.  The Haymarket tragedy was either caused by overzealous cops with way too many guns, or overzealous anarchists with way too many bombs (i.e., one), depending on whom you ask.  (Actually, it no longer matters whom you ask, since all eyewitnesses would give you pretty much the same answer.)  Either way, nervous, well-armed cops and edgy, bomb-throwing anarchists are not a combination one encounters often in the annals of the Nobel Peace Prize.  As a result, Americans ignore May Day and instead celebrate Labor Day, which features plenty of beer and barbecues and very little tear gas.  We may be complacent, but dammit, we know what to do with a steak.

Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889.  Vladimir Lenin was born on April 22, 1870.  Saddam Hussein was born on April 28, 1937.  The Red Baron was born on May 2, 1892.

It’s interesting that Alexander Kerensky, the leader of Russia’s provisional revolutionary government in 1917 until overthrown by Lenin, was born on the same day as Lenin, only eleven years later.

It’s also interesting that both William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes died on April 23, 1616.  Mark Twain died on April 21, 1910.

Shakespeare was also born on that day, in 1564.

Trivia Solution: The first two human beings to have their remains launched into outer space were (d) Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and sixties LSD guru Timothy Leary.   Give yourself ten points for a correct answer.  Give yourself five points if you answered (b), (c), or (e), because each of those was half right.  If you answered (a), subtract twelve points and give yourself a strawberry-kiwi enema.  Bonus: Parker, Texas, was the location of the Ewing Family’s Southfork Ranch, on the TV series Dallas.  Give yourself twenty points for a correct answer.  Give yourself ten points if you figured it had something to do with a television show.  Give yourself five points if you if you knew it was going to be something you didn’t care about.  Give yourself fifty points if you didn’t even try.

Farming Tip

Tips can be raised in a number of ways, but farming is certainly one of the least efficient.  This is the Moron’s Almanac™.  Please try not to get us mixed up: it confuses us and embarrasses the farmers.  Thanks.

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On April 21, 1997, what two Americans became the first people in human history to have some or all of their remains launched into outer space?

a. John Lennon & Robert Oppenheimer

b. Robert Oppenheimer
& Gene Roddenberry

c. Timothy Leary & John Lennon

d. Gene Roddenberry & Timothy Leary

e. Gene Roddenberry & John Lennon

Bonus: On April 28, 1985, there were two tourists in the town of Parker, Texas, for every citizen. Why?