A PLEA FOR NONVIOLENCE

Give up butter; Lose the guns

Published: Friday, April 24, 2009 12:05 PM CDT

I just got an e-mail from my college roommate now living in Arizona.

She bitterly complained about illegal immigrants, which an accompanying article lambasted as taking up one in seven places in Arizona public schools.

I have an idea. How about taking all the money we send to Israel for their defense (which is used in ways many of us disparage and creates massive international hatred toward our government) and send it, instead, to Mexico for social service and educational programs there.

That would be the butter part of the old guns and butter analogy.

Mexicans would have resources to stay put in their own country with renewed hope for better lives than they could find in an unwelcoming society here.

After all, if people from a nation on our own border and our citizens rumble, that really does affect us. Give up the butter and lose the guns sounds much better to me.

Besides, if Israel continues to act in ways which makes its neighbors want to throw it into the sea, it shouldn’t be our problem.

They’re there, and we’re here. Wouldn’t it make us safer to address the problems on our borders and among those who live in America?

Hey, there are solutions which wouldn’t cost America more than it already spends. We’re plump enough not to need the butter, and we could make up for losing the guns with more dodge-ball and soccer games as well as American football to bump the testosterone out of our national angst and those who, evidently, need violence or, at least, roughhouse to find peace within themselves. Just a thought.

Betsy Mayfield

Ames