A friend of mine was a young girl in grade school back in the ’50s when an older and much bigger boy, a “bully,” roamed the schoolyard each day during recess.  He routinely terrorized children of all ages by virtue of his size, attitude, and actions.  He pushed, he shoved, and he hit and punched.  He yelled, he screamed, he threatened.

Why?  Who cares?  That’s how he lived – power through terror.  And before playground aides and security cameras and cell phones, he got away with it day after day.  Everyone was afraid of him, no one attempted to defeat him, and thus he had no reason to stop.  Mostly everyone just tried to avoid him.

Until the day my friend was roller skating with friends and saw him go after her little sister.  She watched, from across the blacktop, as the bully approached her sister.  She saw her sister cower in fear as he yelled at her and stepped closer.  In a flash of brilliant inspiration, my friend crouched and quickly unbuckled one of her clunky metal roller skates and ran/hopped to her sister.  Standing in front of her and, holding the skate by its leather strap, she began swinging the skate above her head in wild, vicious circles.  Of course, the bully had to back off.  If he hadn’t, he would have ended up with a gash to his head, a broken nose, or worse.  While whipping the skate around and around in the bully’s direction, my friend shouted at him to go away and leave everyone alone.  Of course, he did – and never bothered anyone on the playground again.  Lesson learned.  The result: Everyone on the playground was safe.

In 1947, my brother was five years old and still taking a nap every afternoon.  Each day after he awoke, he was given a lollipop and sent outside for some “air.”  Each day, a big girl named Susan walked across the street, snatched the lollypop out of his hand, crossed back to the other side of the street (which he wasn’t allowed to do), and stood there licking it.  Each day, my brother went back in the house, crying.  My mother soon grew tired of this and so taught him to make a fist.  She instructed him to punch Susan if she ever tried to take his lollypop again.  “Don’t say anything.  Just punch her.  She’ll never take it again.’’

Next day, he gets up from his nap, gets a lollipop, and goes outside.  Predictably, Susan crosses the street, surly look on her face, hand outstretched, ready to grab.  He hauls off and lands one square on her mouth.  Now she goes home crying.  It seems she had just come from the dentist and had a sore tooth, and his wallop was the icing on the cake.  Need I even say that Susan never, ever took his lollipop again?

Of course, I am drawing a parallel to Obama’s weakness toward America’s enemies.  The principle is the same and really is very simple.  As vice presidential candidate Pence stated, “weakness arouses evil.”  Let’s elect two men who will not flinch from protecting all of us from real and present dangers.  Let us all take off our skates and rid the world of the psychopaths who want to annihilate us.