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Today's Poll: Do we live in more violent times?

By Howard B. Owens
tom hunt

I don't think we live in a more violent times as compared to the brutality of the Middle Ages. We are more aware of any acts of violence because we live in the age of instant communications. Events that occur here and overseas are flashed instantaneously around the World.

Apr 22, 2015, 10:13am Permalink
Scott Ogle

I think a case can be made that the twentieth century was the most violent on record in world history. I've often thought of my good fortune not to have been born in Central Europe in the 1920s, as opposed to being born in 1948 in the American midwest. We are so fortunate in where America is placed on the globe; I don't think we appreciate it as we should.

Yeah, and not to be a total isolationist, but let's bring our troops home now. We can't stop the conflagration that's spooling up in the Middle East, I think we only have options that make it worse.

Apr 22, 2015, 11:28am Permalink
Kyle Slocum

As the world become more connected we become aware of much more than our parents and grandparents were. Our lives are safer and safer and yet we become more terrified of statistically insignificant risks than of those risks which we are actually likely to face.

I watched my fellows react in horror to the risks Afghans undertook everyday in order to live their lives and I just shook my head. People who know that they can die or be killed at any moment are so much better at risk assessment than we in the West are. We panic over nothing and obsess about the most remote risks while ignoring the things that really threaten us and our children.

Apr 22, 2015, 9:28pm Permalink

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