Defenseless is better than discovering someone we love dead.
Of course. There are actually a great many other situations that are "better than discovering someone we love dead."
Among my own favorite alternatives to "discovering someone we love dead" are eating tuna salad sandwiches prepared with homemade mayonaisse, relaxing in a hammock on a summer day, and reading a good novel. Best of all is to combine the three, because the combination of them is far more pleasurable "than discovering someone we love dead." I'd go even further and say that I would rather not find someone I don't love dead.
But it's not awfully bright to tell parents and grandparents that being defenseless is protection against "discovering someone we love dead." Otherwise good parents would
make their children defenseless against
all dangers, real and potential.
What parent or grandparent other than Mrs. Powell and her husband would lie in a hammock, eating a sandwich, and reading a good book while their grandchildren played with a strange dog whose mouth frothed with rabid spittle? A good parent or grandparent would, I think, discard the sandwich and the book and leap out of the hammock to defend the child they loved. And they would want an effective tool--anything that might work--to defend that child.
Defending the lives and wellbeing of people we love is perhaps the surest sign of our love. Mr. and Mrs. Powell, however, believe otherwise. They consider it a virtue to have their family defenseless. That's strange love indeed.
If defenselessness were any way to protect ourselves and our families, that knowledge would have preceded the Powells by many generations throughout the world. When the first cavedwellers saw their children attacked by fanged beasts they would not have lifted a hairy finger to defend their offspring. Leaping ahead to this century, if defenselessness worked as a way to prevent death the police and the military throughout the world would discard their weapons and body armor at the first sign of attack. Rosie O'Donnell, Ted Kennedy, and Michael Bloomberg would not be accompanied by armed bodyguards. Adam Walsh would be without a television program. The World Trade Center and the Murrah Federal Center would still be standing. Seat belts and car seats for children would be outlawed. Pedophiles would be in great demand as babysitters.
And Mrs. Powell's advice, applauded by her husband, would be sane and sound instead of mere drivel urged upon parents and grandparents whose children's lives will be in great danger if they believe what the Powells are trying to sell them as a good idea. Mr. and Mrs. Powell evidently care everything about their agenda and nothing at all about the lives of other people or their children.
We really were more intelligent in my day as a parent. People like the Powells would have been disregarded entirely or tarred and feathered, then ridden out of town on a rail.
In a sense, though, the Powells do us a favor. They and their newspaper seem dedicated to the creation of easy victims. Predators, madmen, and violent criminals prefer defenseless people to those who defend themselves and their children. In creating easy victims for the lawless and the insane, the Powells insure them a steady supply of prey. What predator is crazy enough to go after a grandchild whose families defend them when there are defenseless children readily at hand? What loving parent or grandparent with a functioning brain could possibly find any sense in Mrs. Powell's "Defenseless is better than discovering someone we love dead."