Friday, November 9, 2007

Point to Ponder

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It is January, 1829. The place is Georgia, in the Russian Empire. A three-week old infant, Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, dies in his mother's arms. Is this a tragedy?

He didn't really die. He grew up as a horribly abused child with an alcoholic father. He survived smallpox, which he suffered at age 7, but with a permanently and badly scarred face. He lived until 1953. You know him as Josef Stalin, whose atrocities made Hitler look like a choir boy. (That's an ironic comparison, as Stalin actually WAS at one time a choir boy!)

Would it have been a tragedy if he had died in infancy?

How about if Osama Bin Laden had?

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