INTRODUCTION TO LAW: 101.

Ever been in a lawyers office, or seen one on TV or in the movies? Did you notice all of the legal books on the bookshelves, most of them chock full of the various laws that have been enacted over the years. These volumes could be for anything from local or municipal to state and yes, even federal laws. Then there are also maritime and international laws and who knows what else. I want you to know that all of these laws were the result of Moses backpacking it up Mt. Sinai when he was given the Ten Commandments, which have since been extrapolated a kazillion times until we have today what is referred to as The Law. There have been many versions of how this happened. Here is one of them:

While struggling up the mountain, the Lord called out to Moses.
“Moses, I would like to present you with my Commandments.”
“Commandments? What are they?”
“To tell the truth, I first tried to convince the Egyptians and when I told them that
one of the commandments stipulated that, “Thou shall have no other God before
you”, they said, “no way”, and then I tried the Babylonians and when I told them
that one of the commandments said that, “Thou shall not covet thy
neighbors wife”, they said, “are you kidding?”, and so here I am.”
“Commandments, hmmm. What do they cost?”
“Why Moses, they’re for free.”
“For free, you say? Alright – I’ll take ten.”

Did it actually go down that way? Probably not, but we’ll never know.

The point I’m trying to make is that from when Moses did his thing some 3,400 years ago, give or take, is that the human (did I say human) race, with the exception of some, did not really progress that much when it came to dealing with itself and its environs. This must all be due to the 11th Commandment that was added to the original ten by the people themselves, which sayeth: “Do unto others before they do it to you”.

VIOLENCE.

Whether on a personal level or on the wide screen, there doesn’t seem to be any end in sight. You can check it out on the internet, the TV, newspapers, magazines and even the radio. This is not fake news. It’s for real – as real as it gets. Is there more of it now than there was when we first started to keep records? There is more now because there are more people now that can commit these atrocities. Over the past seventy five years the world wide population has increased from about two billion to about seven billion, a three and a half times increase. And this increase is in spite of our wars, pogroms, ethnic cleansing, natural disasters and the various pandemics that visit us from time to time. Percentage wise, I don’t think that people are necessarily worse now than they were a few thousand years ago. It may seem that way because of the technology that provides us with information from across the globe instantaneously and in color. But then again, I have not seen the actuarial tables that break down our mortality by specific cause.

VIOLENCE AGAINST CHILDREN.

For 23 years I was a Reserve Detective with the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, of which most of the time I was with the Special Victims or Child Abuse Unit. The amount of and the type of violence against children was beyond anything that you can imagine, which ranged from all kinds of sexual abuse, torture and outright murder. Most of these acts were, as expected, committed by males against females. Males were also victims, usually of other males. Once in a while a male or female might be a victim of a female. Nevertheless, whatever you read about in the papers or heard about on TV, it was only the tip of the iceberg. The perpetrators were not as you might think, from poor or underprivileged backgrounds. They came from all walks of life and economic levels.

Why such a fuss about the children? If you steal something from any other person such as a car, a piece of jewelry, a significant other or anything else of value, the victim can in most instances replace the loss. The only thing that the children have that is of any value is what they are born with, their innocence. Once that is taken from them, they can never get it back. And the children, abused or not, do represent our future.

PERCEPTION.

The dictionary says, sort of: perception is a belief or opinion that is based on how things seem to be, based on the impression that you get. Then I see photographs of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie with his family sunning themselves on the beach that just happens to be closed to all of the citizens of New Jersey with the excuse that the beaches were closed because of the lack of funds that are needed to keep the public beaches open. Was this a valid excuse? Maybe yes and maybe no. But the perception in this instance is that the excuse given is not a valid one.