[CS-FSLUG] Long, but a VERY GOOD read!!

[Fred Miller]

ON SHEEP, WOLVES, AND SHEEPDOGS
  By LTC(RET) Dave Grossman, RANGER, Ph.D.,author of "On Killing."

  Honor never grows old, and honor rejoices the heart of age. It does so
 because honor is, finally, about defending those noble and worthy things
 that deserve defending, even if it comes at a high cost. In our time, that
 may mean social disapproval, public scorn, hardship, persecution, or as
 always, even death itself. The question remains: What is worth defending?
 What is worth dying for? What is worth living for? - William J. Bennett - in
 a lecture to the United States Naval Academy November 24, 1997

  One Vietnam veteran, an old retired colonel, once said this to me: "Most of
 the people in our society are sheep. They are kind, gentle, productive
 creatures who can only hurt one another by accident." This is true.
 Remember, the murder rate is six per 100,000 per year, and the aggravated
 assault rate is four per 1,000 per year. What this means is that the vast
 majority of Americans are not inclined to hurt one another.

  Some estimates say that two million Americans are victims of violent crimes
 every year, a tragic, staggering number, perhaps an all-time record rate of
 violent crime. But there are almost 300 million Americans, which means that
 the odds of being a victim of violent crime is considerably less than one in
 a hundred on any given year. Furthermore, since many violent crimes are
 committed by repeat offenders, the actual number of violent citizens is
 considerably less than two million.

  Thus there is a paradox, and we must grasp both ends of the situation: We
 may well be in the most violent times in history, but violence is still
 remarkably rare. This is because most citizens are kind, decent people who
 are not capable of hurting each other, except by accident or under extreme
 provocation. They are sheep.

  I mean nothing negative by calling them sheep. To me it is like the pretty,
 blue robin's egg. Inside it is soft and gooey but someday it will grow into
 something wonderful. But the egg cannot survive without its hard blue shell.
 Police officers, soldiers, and other warriors are like that shell, and
 someday the civilization they protect will grow into something wonderful.?
 For now, though, they need warriors to protect them from the predators.

  "Then there are the wolves," the old war veteran said, "and the wolves feed
 on the sheep without mercy." Do you believe there are wolves out there who
 will feed on the flock without mercy? You better believe it. There are evil
 men in this world and they are capable of evil deeds. The moment you forget
 that or pretend it is not so, you become a sheep. There is no safety in
 denial.

  "Then there are sheepdogs," he went on, "and I'm a sheepdog. I live to
 protect the flock and confront the wolf."

  If you have no capacity for violence then you are a healthy productive
 citizen, a sheep. If you have a capacity for violence and no empathy for
 your fellow citizens, then you have defined an aggressive sociopath, a wolf.
 But what if you have a capacity for violence, and a deep love for your
 fellow citizens?

  What do you have then? A sheepdog, a warrior, someone who is walking the
 hero's path. Someone who can walk into the heart of darkness, into the
 universal human phobia, and walk out unscathed

  Let me expand on this old soldier's excellent model of the sheep, wolves,
 and sheepdogs. We know that the sheep live in denial, that is what makes
 them sheep. They do not want to believe that there is evil in the world.
 They can accept the fact that fires can happen, which is why they want fire
 extinguishers, fire sprinklers, fire alarms and fire exits throughout their
 kids' schools.

  But many of them are outraged at the idea of putting an armed police
 officer in their kid's school. Our children are thousands of times more
 likely to be killed or seriously injured by school violence than fire, but
 the sheep's only response to the possibility of violence is denial. The idea
 of someone coming to kill or harm their child is just too hard, and so they
 chose the path of denial.

  The sheep generally do not like the sheepdog. He looks a lot like the wolf.
 He has fangs and the capacity for violence. The difference, though, is that
 the sheepdog must not, can not and will not ever harm the sheep. Any sheep
 dog who intentionally harms the lowliest little lamb will be punished and
 removed. The world cannot work any other way, at least not in a
 representative democracy or a republic such as ours.

  Still, the sheepdog disturbs the sheep. He is a constant reminder that
 there are wolves in the land. They would prefer that he didn't tell them
 where to go, or give them traffic tickets, or stand at the ready in our
 airports in camouflage fatigues holding an M-16. The sheep would much rather
 have the sheepdog cash in his fangs, spray paint himself white, and go,
 "Baa."

  Until the wolf shows up. Then the entire flock tries desperately to hide
 behind one lonely sheepdog.

  The students, the victims, at Columbine High School were big, tough high
 school students, and under ordinary circumstances they would not have had
 the time of day for a police officer. They were not bad kids; they just had
 nothing to say to a cop. When the school was under attack, however, and SWAT
 teams were clearing the rooms and hallways, the officers had to physically
 peel those clinging, sobbing kids off of them. This is how the little lambs
 feel about their sheepdog when the wolf is at the door.

  Look at what happened after September 11, 2001 when the wolf pounded hard
 on the door. Remember how America, more than ever before, felt differently
 about their law enforcement officers and military personnel? Remember how
 many times you heard the word hero?

  Understand that there is nothing morally superior about being a sheepdog;
 it is just what you choose to be. Also understand that a sheepdog is a funny
 critter: He is always sniffing around out on the perimeter, checking the
 breeze, barking at things that go bump in the night, and yearning for a
 righteous battle. That is, the young sheepdogs yearn for a righteous battle.
 The old sheepdogs are a little older and wiser, but they move to the sound
 of the guns when needed right along with the young ones.

  Here is how the sheep and the sheepdog think differently. The sheep pretend
 the wolf will never come, but the sheepdog lives for that day. After the
 attacks on September 11, 2001, most of the sheep, that is, most citizens in
 America said, "Thank God I wasn't on one of those planes." The sheepdogs,
 the warriors, said, "Dear God, I wish I could have been on one of those
 planes. Maybe I could have made a difference." When you are truly
 transformed into a warrior and have truly invested yourself into
 warriorhood, you want to be there. You want to be able to make a difference.

  There is nothing morally superior about the sheepdog, the warrior, but he
 does have one real advantage. Only one. And that is that he is able to
 survive and thrive in an environment that destroys 98 percent of the
 population.

  There was research conducted a few years ago with individuals convicted of
 violent crimes. These cons were in prison for serious, predatory crimes of
 violence: assaults, murders and killing law enforcement officers. The vast
 majority said that they specifically targeted victims by body language:
 slumped walk, passive behavior and lack of awareness. They chose their
 victims like big cats do in Africa, when they select one out of the herd
 that is least able to protect itself.

  Some people may be destined to be sheep and others might be genetically
 primed to be wolves or sheepdogs. But I believe that most people can choose
 which one they want to be, and I'm proud to say that more and more Americans
 are choosing to become sheepdogs.

  Seven months after the attack on September 11, 2001, Todd Beamer was
 honored in his hometown of Cranbury, New Jersey. Todd, as you recall, was
 the man on Flight 93 over Pennsylvania who called on his cell phone to alert
 an operator from United Airlines about the hijacking. When he learned of the
 other three passenger planes that had been used as weapons, Todd dropped his
 phone and uttered the words, "Let's roll," which authorities believe was a
 signal to the other passengers to confront the terrorist hijackers. In one
 hour, a transformation occurred among the passengers - athletes, business
 people and parents. -- from sheep to sheepdogs and together they fought the
 wolves, ultimately saving an unknown number of lives on the ground.

  There is no safety for honest men except by believing all possible evil of
 evil men. - Edmund Burke

  Here is the point I like to emphasize, especially to the thousands of
 police officers and soldiers I speak to each year. In nature the sheep, real
 sheep, are born as sheep. Sheepdogs are born that way, and so are wolves.
 They didn't have a choice. But you are not a critter. As a human being, you
 can be whatever you want to be. It is a conscious, moral decision.

  If you want to be a sheep, then you can be a sheep and that is okay, but
 you must understand the price you pay. When the wolf comes, you and your
 loved ones are going to die if there is not a sheepdog there to protect you.
 If you want to be a wolf, you can be one, but the sheepdogs are going to
 hunt you down and you will never have rest, safety, trust or love. But if
 you want to be a sheepdog and walk the warrior's path, then you must make a
 conscious and moral decision every day to dedicate, equip and prepare
 yourself to thrive in that toxic, corrosive moment when the wolf comes
 knocking at the door.

  For example, many officers carry their weapons in church.? They are well
 concealed in ankle holsters, shoulder holsters or inside-the-belt holsters
 tucked into the small of their backs.? Anytime you go to some form of
 religious service, there is a very good chance that a police officer in your
 congregation is carrying. You will never know if there is such an individual
 in your place of worship, until the wolf appears to massacre you and your
 loved ones.

  I was training a group of police officers in Texas, and during the break,
 one officer asked his friend if he carried his weapon in church. The other
 cop replied, "I will never be caught without my gun in church." I asked why
 he felt so strongly about this, and he told me about a cop he knew who was
 at a church massacre in Ft. Worth, Texas in 1999. In that incident, a
 mentally deranged individual came into the church and opened fire, gunning
 down fourteen people. He said that officer believed he could have saved
 every life that day if he had been carrying his gun. His own son was shot,
 and all he could do was throw himself on the boy's body and wait to die.
 That cop looked me in the eye and said, "Do you have any idea how hard it
 would be to live with yourself after that?"

  Some individuals would be horrified if they knew this police officer was
 carrying a weapon in church. They might call him paranoid and would probably
 scorn him. Yet these same individuals would be enraged and would call for
 "heads to roll" if they found out that the airbags in their cars were
 defective, or that the fire extinguisher and fire sprinklers in their kids'
 school did not work. They can accept the fact that fires and traffic
 accidents can happen and that there must be safeguards against them.

  Their only response to the wolf, though, is denial, and all too often their
 response to the sheepdog is scorn and disdain. But the sheepdog quietly asks
 himself, "Do you have and idea how hard it would be to live with yourself if
 your loved ones attacked and killed, and you had to stand there helplessly
 because you were unprepared for that day?"

  It is denial that turns people into sheep. Sheep are psychologically
 destroyed by combat because their only defense is denial, which is
 counterproductive and destructive, resulting in fear, helplessness and
 horror when the wolf shows up.

  Denial kills you twice. It kills you once, at your moment of truth when you
 are not physically prepared: you didn't bring your gun, you didn't train.
 Your only defense was wishful thinking. Hope is not a strategy. Denial kills
 you a second time because even if you do physically survive, you are
 psychologically shattered by your fear helplessness and horror at your
 moment of truth.

  Gavin de Becker puts it like this in Fear Less, his superb post-9/11 book,
 which should be required reading for anyone trying to come to terms with our
 current world situation: "...denial can be seductive, but it has an
 insidious side effect. For all the peace of mind deniers think they get by
 saying it isn't so, the fall they take when faced with new violence is all
 the more unsettling."

  Denial is a save-now-pay-later scheme, a contract written entirely in small
 print, for in the long run, the denying person knows the truth on some
 level.

  And so the warrior must strive to confront denial in all aspects of his
 life, and prepare himself for the day when evil comes.

  If you are warrior who is legally authorized to carry a weapon and you step
 outside without that weapon, then you become a sheep, pretending that the
 bad man will not come today. No one can be "on" 24/7, for a lifetime.
 Everyone needs down time. But if you are authorized to carry a weapon, and
 you walk outside without it, just take a deep breath, and say this to
 yourself... "Baa."

  This business of being a sheep or a sheep dog is not a yes-no dichotomy. It
 is not an all-or-nothing, either-or choice. It is a matter of degrees, a
 continuum. On one end is an abject, head-in-the-sand-sheep and on the other
 end is the ultimate warrior. Few people exist completely on one end or the
 other.

  Most of us live somewhere in between. Since 9-11 almost everyone in America
 took a step up that continuum, away from denial. The sheep took a few steps
 toward accepting and appreciating their warriors, and the warriors started
 taking their job more seriously. The degree to which you move up that
 continuum, away from sheephood and denial, is the degree to which you and
 your loved ones will survive, physically and psychologically at your moment
 of truth.

-- 
"Ballmer is no more designed for the art of persuasion 
than the Abrams tank is for delivering meals on wheels."