A colleague here likes to argue that though we have terrible acts of violence today, it still is the safest time in human history.
I tend to agree.
The Assyrians - the bad guys of the Old Testament - would make Hitler look like just an average ruler.
The Romans meted out plenty of death and destruction.
Vlad the Impaler . . . well, the name says it all with him.
Alexander the Great wiped people out left and right and look at how we remember him.
The death and destruction of the Middle Ages are unfathomable.
Even the swift and sadistic punishment of the Spanish Inquisition or Puritan New England during the Salem witch trials are a far cry from anything today.
Or maybe not.
I have to think that witnessing 500 people cut to pieces with machetes in the name of some extreme Muslim sect would fit right in with anything going on with the Assyrians or the Spanish Inquisition.
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