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• Tuesday, January 6, 2009 06:35 AM

  If Mexico shelled Texas, like Hamas shells Israel

  from: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1052866.html

  Analogy One: A fanatical religious party wins a string of elections in Mexico's northern states, then stages a civil war to drive out the federal government and take full control.

  The party's charter demands the return to Mexico of the occupied territories of California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Texas.

  Firing homemade rockets and more advanced projectiles smuggled in from Iran and China, the party's gunners can hit a total of one of every seven Americans, or 43,598,000 people, in a broad swath which includes Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, Albuquerque, Austin, San Antonio and Houston, and Las Vegas.

  In all of these areas, pre-schools, grade schools, and universities are all forced to shut down. Families sleep in bomb shelters, and return to them several times a day during air raids. Businesses are shuttered, and the economy shuts down.

  ______________________

  Analogy Two: A man comes into your home. He has a gun he made himself. He points it at your family. He fires, but misses. The gun has little accuracy. He fires repeatedly, missing again and again.

  You have a much better gun, made in a real factory. It is in the drawer in the bedroom.

  Demonstrators in London and San Francisco - who are distant relatives of the gunman - stage a protest, calling you a murderer and demanding that you keep the well-made gun in the drawer because it would be a disproportionate response.

  The man with the homemade gun, it turns out, is a religious fanatic who lives across the street. You were once his landlord. There is much bad blood between you.

  He races back across the street. He has a larger weapon that he smuggled in through his basement. He shoots from behind his younger son. He wounds your daughter. You take out a rifle. You aim for him and hit the son, killing the boy.

  The demonstrators are now calling you a Nazi and chant "Slaughter the Landlord!"

  [In his defense, the neighbor explains that you have kept him and his family locked in the house, and have at times, failed to pay his water, gas and electric bills, causing them to be turned off.

  This is some years after the neighbor send out his older son, nicely dressed, to knock on your door. Your older daughter opens the door. He greet her politely, and presses the detonator on a homemade bomb.]

  —stevkar Read stevkar's other letters
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