Stardate 20020521.2116

(On Screen): There are a lot of people for which there is little or no connection between the abstract and the concrete. They can take a philosophic political position without realizing its consequences.

These are the people who parade against globalization while wearing clothes and shoes made overseas. These are the people who campaign for complete cessation of utilization of the Brazilian rainforest, without seeing the slums of Brazil's cities and the people there who have no other way out. These are the people who want to boycott goods made in the third world because the pay there isn't sufficient, without realizing that by doing so they condemn those workers to layoff and no pay at all.

The only real solution for such people is to have their faces rubbed in the reality implicit in their attitudes. Anyone who opposes fetal cell research should spend a day helping to care for someone who suffers from advanced Parkinson's disease, for instance. Anyone who opposes physician-aided euthanasia should watch the documentary prepared in the UK which showed what Diane Pretty's life was like before she finally died the horrible death she most feared.

And people who try to claim moral equivalence between the US and the Islamic Fundamentalists we face should watch the video of Daniel Pearl having his throat cut and then being brutally decapitated. Then they should be asked to explain just how it was really America's fault that he died.

If, afterwards, they can still hold to those positions and make cogent arguments in their favor, then I will respect them far more. But I think the vast majority of them would have their beliefs deeply shaken.

The video of Pearl's death is apparently now on the web as an MPEG. No-one decent needs to see that video or should seek it out. I have not seen it, I do not need to see it, and I have no interest in seeing it. Pearl's demise should not become theater à la Le Grand Guignol. That dishonors him and cheapens his death.

But if the video of his death can be used to defeat politically, militarily and morally the cause of those who butchered him, then it represents his final revenge. It may even grant his death some small meaning, and prevent it from being a complete waste of a good man. And for those who cannot see the big picture of just how evil our enemies are, perhaps a small graphic representation of it will help.

Those who cannot truly internalize the deaths of thousands may come to understand the death of one, if they actually watch it happen. Those for whom the destruction of the WTC towers was a political act may come to realize that the death of this one man was vicious atrocity which cannot be justified in any way.