Monday, Dec 14th, 2009

Monday morning and the world is rolling along. The Prime Minister of Italy Silvio Berlusconi got hit in the face over the weekend with a thrown statue. It seems that initially people thought he had been punched and I know there have been incidences of people being hit in the face with pies in Europe but I think this is the first time anyone has been statued.

I am not poking fun by any means at this because the Prime Minister broke his nose and was pretty shaken up by the attack. But it makes we wonder if I had ever been so upset to strike out at a political leader. I have been in a few fist fights over the years. I do not think I have had more fights then what is normal for boys growing up. So I can understand getting upset and squaring off against someone but this seems to be completely different then that. The obvious difference that the PM and the statue thrower did not square off and raise fists in the approved Louis L'amour style. Also the statue thrower was mentally ill so it is probably wrong of me to try to find a rational reason for the attack. But that does raise an interesting point. If someone strikes out at a leader are they by definition mentally ill? If you opinion is that they are then how do you account for differing political rebels over the years who have struck back against standing governments?

I know for a fact that in the case of the American revolution they built basically a legal case against the King of England that would allow them to begin the fight. So I would think it would be hard to make a case calling them mentally ill. Though I am sure there were people who did not believe in the cause and would have argued passionately that they were insane to even attempt such a thing. I sometimes wonder how upset I would have to be to take up arms against the big G Government. I know there are people very upset right now about the Obama administration just like there were people on the other side very upset about the Bush administration. There are also people very upset about the nature of Government in America and feel that the two parties are just different sides of the same coin.

I wonder what that would do to the world or America in general if there were to be another revolution in this country. I think that one of our strengths in America is that we have an election every four years and that helps us to not build to so much anger and frustration that violence is the result. It is going to be interesting to see what happens in the future as we move forward politically.