…I’d like to propose another law that will uphold the respect for the law, and prevent much harm to befall an innocent, law-abiding populace.

The police will have the right to enter and investigate any house they suspect of having a party where alcohol is available to people under the age of 21. (“Reasonable suspicion,” of course, should suffice.)

There are many reasons why I think politicians—especially Arizona governor Jan “Chosen by God” Brewer—should support this:

• the law simply enforces a law that prohibits adults, even a child’s parents, from allowing a child access to alcohol
• if a parent doesn’t break the law, s/he has nothing to worry about; only those who would violate the law should feel put out as policemen storm their house looking for underage drinking
• in a recent survey, 28% of teens had been to a party where alcohol was served to minors and parents/adults were present
• teens who start drinking at age 15 are 5 times as likely as those who start after 20 to end up abusing or becoming dependent on alcohol
• 23% of the teenage drivers involved in deadly car accidents had a blood alcohol level of above 0.08%, about 1,100 per year, and with the economic equivalent cost of over $9 billion annually, nationally

Obviously, parents turning a blind eye to—or even encouraging—drinking among children under their care are responsible for an enormous cost financially and in terms of lives. Should innocent, law-abiding taxpayers have to pay the price for other people breaking the law?

Parents who are found providing alcohol to children under the age of 21, even a glass of champagne on New Year’s, should:

• be imprisoned
• have their children put in foster care
  (I mean, we can’t deport them, right?)

Much like the illegal immigrants knowingly violating our nation’s laws, and, in many cases, breaking other laws and causing crime, these parents who ply their children with booze are violating our nation’s laws, leading to their children breaking other laws and causing crime, death and destruction.

SO…when can we expect the law-abiding, proudly conservative folks who supported Arizona SB 1070, to support this as well? Unless they’re utter hypocrites, they certainly should!

The world’s most famous living physicist, Stephen Hawking, sounded a bit of a sci-fi warning recently, suggesting that life beyond our solar system is probably likely, and wouldn’t necessarily be friendly to humans if we were to make contact with it. Since when did Hawking become such a paranoid? you might say. Well. Think about it. Even our own evolutionary history on earth–I’m talking about every living thing, not just homo sapiens–has been more marked by aggression towards other species, not peacefulness. Eat or be eaten, kill or be killed. Brutal, but such is the fascist temperament of Mother Nature.

This reminded me of a very short episode of The Twilight Zone, one bereft of dazzling special effects, but laden with a thought-provoking twist (A Small Talent for War – SPOILER). In it, an alien arrives at the United Nations and announces to the world’s representatives that they had created mankind millions of years ago, and that he was sent to see how the species was coming along. He states disdainfully that humanity has “a small talent for war” and that it would have 24 hours to show more promise, or else it would be destroyed. The UN urgently spends the next day furiously arguing to hammer out a worldwide peace deal, to impress the aliens and allow man to continue to exist. When the alien reappears and looks at the peace deal, he laughs and intimates that he seems to have been misunderstood; the aliens are in the business of creating warriors, and this latest attempt at peace proves that mankind is definitely not up to snuff, and will be promptly vaporized as an experiment gone awry. (Don’t know how much longer it’ll be available, but it’s here at Vimeo)

So this had me thinking: will mankind’s propensity for violence eventually vindicate us? Will our nuclear, biological and other weapons of mass destruction eventually be useful when we’re locked in mortal battle with another life form? Maybe the continued tensions around the world and the military-industrial complex that have grown to coddle them are all part of a master plan that will ensure our eventual survival. Maybe we need togive war a chance.

Or will our violent nature end up encouraging us to do to other extraterrestrial species what Hawking suggests might happen to us? Having outgrown the space on our planet, we’ll be turned outward in search of lebensraum and resources in order to survive, and will end up obliterating the life forms that have sprouted up in the universe’s oases.

Or maybe we’ll need those weapons when manmade robots rebel against us and attempt to destroy us? Hey, if I, Robot, Terminator and Battlestar Galactica have all seized on this theme, maybe there’s a nugget of truth to it. Maybe.

Impossible to know, but it makes you wonder if Mother Nature, in all of her awesome yet cruel power, continues to favor long-term survival over compassion.