Watching a hawk swoop down on the covey of quail in my backyard and scatter it this morning was certainly a reminder Nature is not sensitive to the lives of lesser creatures farther down on the food chain, does not distinguish between prey and predator. It would be vain attempting to tell a hawk to leave the quail alone since it is a predator by instinct.

There is an embarrassing abundance of analogies between politicians and the hawk that swooped down on the quail, between politicians and Nature red in tooth and claw. In the nature of things the strong prey on the weak, but the hawk did not choose to be a hawk, and quail do not choose to be quail. However; easily casting aside any altruistic “Mr. Smith’s” and the hypocritical claims of “public service” politicians choose to be politicians, and as such choose to be predators.

If I had not known before mixing it up in the bars for years before writing my book Birds With Broken Wings I certainly learned the truth of the maxims “Nice guys finish last,” and “Nice guys never get the last dance” during that period of my life. If men are born to hunt them, women are born to be hunted. But it is this too often predisposition women appear to have that invites the attention of those not considered to be the nice guys and the hunter moves in on them. And this is true no matter whether in a church or a bar.

But unlike politicians that choose to be predators, men and women are wired by a multitude of genetic factors predisposing them to fulfill their gender specific roles. And the hawk and the quail are fulfilling their genetic roles as well; the result being life is predominantly unfair throughout; notwithstanding giving full employment to our modern day witch doctors, psychiatrists and psychologists, lawyers, politicians, judges, TV and radio talk show hosts, columnists, etc. ad nauseum.

It would be an enormous error to subscribe anything of personality to “Nature” though much poetic license is taken in doing so. And I have no fault to find with poets and those, including myself, who find so much of beauty throughout nature and choose to write about such beauty. But the fact remains nature as such has no consciousness of person, that life throughout is at the mercy of uncaring elements invariably favoring the strong over the weak, the cunning over the less intelligent, a point well made by Machiavelli and not a few others.

Contrary to reason, it is not that pile of noble books, the worthiest thoughts of humankind by philosophers and those books comprising the library of the Great Conversation and the Harvard Classics by which heaven is to be scaled at last. On the contrary scaling heaven seems to have fallen to the builders of a new Tower of Babel using the Koran, The Prince, Karl Marx, Mein Kampf, and a witch’s brew of such “building stones” for the purpose.

So while recently listening to a retired general answering the question of how the war against terrorism is to be won reply “You kill the enemy” I applauded his succinct sagacity. This is how the Allies won WWII. But the nations of Western Civilization have not won a war since that time. And why not? Because the general summed neatly the process by which all wars are won.

When a man moves on a woman he finds attractive, there are certain rules of social behavior in a civilized society that must be followed. But in barbarian societies, including many of them right here in America, there is only the strong preying upon the weak. Every case of monsters in human guise preying on women and children evidences the fact there are indeed monsters to be found in all nations no matter the degree of civilized sophistication and the multitude of laws ostensibly designed to protect women and children from the monsters preying on them. Still, like our immigration laws and other such no law is any better than its enforcement.

As to WWIII, if this is the case no amount of civilized behavior or laws will take the place of killing the enemy. And just so with the monsters preying on women and children. The only way I can save the quail is by killing the hawk. To save all the quail I need to kill all the hawks and “balance of nature” be damned!

Cold blooded as such pragmatism is it remains the way to protect women and children from monsters, it remains the way wars are won. The world facing the threat of nuclear terrorism it only remains to be seen which nations will prove the more pragmatic. In this it must be remembered politicians are predators. A point to keep in mind as we watch and listen to this present crop of hawks posturing and pandering for votes all the while only seeing We the People as quail. And these predators seeing We the People as only quail are not going to solve the problems of the manifold threats facing America. And since this is reality what does this say of those at the highest point of the food chain, the billionaires at the top feeding on the quail worldwide owning these lesser predator politicians!

Like many of you I listen to the “cooler heads” talk of China and Russia not wanting to destroy America since it is not in their economic interest to do so; of attempts to accommodate Big Oil, Iran and North Korea for the “greater good” geopolitically. But then I think of the hawk and the quail, I think of the monsters preying on women and children only to be allowed free to continue their depredations, I think of the millions of barbarians invading America from Mexico for the sake of slave labor benefiting those at the top of the “food chain” and that puts things in proper pragmatic perspective. You win wars by killing the enemy. But our present crop of “chicken hawks” are only adept at killing quail, not those above them at the top of the food chain.