But, then again, I can't even get along with my crazy neighbor dude. (chuckle)

This is an excerpt from a book... I love this particular piece and maybe it isn't the kind of thing that belongs here, Papa feel free to take it down if you don't think it should be on this site. I am not really sure if it is the kind of thing you like discussing here or not? No harm intended. Ok

Note that I am starting this somewhere in the middle... most of the beginning has to do with recommendations as to how and when to use this particular book in a homeschool setting... So, It may sound a little strange.. but i think you will get the gist of the particular words in this that I have found so fascinating... and thought they may be appropriate here .... Maybe a thought for all to discuss.. I really found this to be peaceful to my soul... and very true indeed... I am not well read or educated so I also thought someone here with more knowledge of "history" may also be able to enlighten me more on the story of who Alexander Solzhenitsyn was... I kind of have a pretty good idea in my mind of who and what period of time this is referring too.. But, I may find out from some of you that my idea may be wrong... Anyhow, here it is.

This passage is from The Story of the World... Vol.4 The Modern Age By Susan Wise Bauer.... From the Forword of the book...
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Despite their violent nature, I don't think these events should be ignored by parents of young children. A fourth grader hears the news on the car radio, on the TV, or in the conversation of his elders. He hears the words ("terrorism") and senses the worry of the adults around him. A fourth or fifth grader who has a vague idea of what is going on in the world deserves to be started on the path to understanding. The shape of the world today is not random; it has been formed by a very definite pattern of happenings. To deny a child an understanding of that pattern is truly to doom a child to fear, because war, unrest, and violence appear totally random.

Even in this book, violence is not random. It is alarming, but not random. As you read, you will see, again and again, The same pattern acted out: A person or a group of people rejects injustice by rebelling and seizing the reins of power. As soon as those reins are in the hands of the rebels, the rebels become the establishment, the victims become the tyrants, the freedom-fighters become the dictators. The man who shouts for equality in one decade purges, in the next decade, those who shout against him...........................

................................................................................................................................................Again and again, while researching this book, I was reminded of the words of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who spent eleven years in the labor camps of the Soviet Union, and who, when he became powerless, finally understood that revolution never brings on end to oppression. Solzhenitsyn wrote, "In the intoxication of youthful successes. I had felt myself to be infallible, and I was therefore cruel. In the surfeit of power I was a murderer and an oppressor.....And it was only when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good... Even in the best of hearts there remains...an un uprooted small corner of evil. Since then I have come to understand the truth of all the religions of the world; They struggle with the evil inside a human being...And since that time I have come to understand the falsehood of all the revolutions in history; They destroy only those carriers of evil contemporary with them"

Revolution shatters the structures; but the men who build the next set of structures haven't conquered the evil that lives in their own hearts. The history of twentieth century is, again and again, the story of men who fight against tyrants, win the battle, and then are overwhelmed by the unconquered tyranny in their own souls.