Dear Parents,

You are very fortunate to have been blessed with thoughtful, creative and able bodied children able to enjoy all aspects of life's great adventure to the fullest. Please do not let the hateful, juvenile, bully and battering type remarks made by some people on YT distract from that good and joyful experience.

When I watched the Seattle Peace March videos showing your children with a beautiful rainbow flag I thought it was great that here were some children going out in public marching for a great cause, peace, which is their hope for the future. That is a great cause because the alternative is hate, prejudice, war, death and destruction. How can anyone suggest that parents who teach or motivate their children to embrace love and peace is to prohibit freedom of thought, dreaming or imagining! I've never heard a more ignorant idea! It is like saying to a tot, "Here, take this gun it is only a toy. Blow your brains out. Death is not real!" Parents who do not teach their children love and peace and the value of life are the ones teaching and promoting the lies which later in life end up with their children coming home in pine boxes, with their bodies blown apart or their brains damaged by IEDs.

It is just utter ingornance for parents to NOT be teaching their children all around the world to love, to work for peace and to use nonviolent conflect resolution. This does NOT mean submitting to those who beat, bully, batter, molest or otherwise may try to exploit them. You have respect yourself and love yourself and NOT let anyone hurt or harm you. That means also teaching children how to fight back with words, with logic and reason, with bonding and other methods of nonviolent conflict resolution. For it will be the children who learn these important skills when young who will become the negotiaters, the diplomates and the peace makers in the future. They are the ones who will be blessed with a life most rich and full, not by any gold standard, but by a standard greater than can be measured. Some may call it God's love; others may call it having a heart of gold or a soul of light!

Certainly anyone who is a parent in this day and age who is blessed with adorable children should be proud that they march for peace! Although some peope may not be able to see the future one thing seems certain. Given the world's population explosion the conflicts and castastrophies, the inhumanity to man, the war, genocide and destruction of the future will make those of the past pale by comparison. This is a matter of probabilitiy statistics, pure and simple. This is why I say it is vital to teach our children how to love, how to promote peace and how to use nonviolent conflict resolution to solve problems and find solutions with their fellow man.

This is not an easy path to take and it is not easy to follow. Nor does it mean letting terrorist blow you away or labeling everyone who is different from you a terrorist and blowing them away. Rather it means teaching all the children of the world how to love and promote peace such that terrorist of the future are deprived of those children who would become terrorists. For the way to win the war against terrorist is simply to take away a future generation of terrorist.

Yes, I know that it only takes one person to walk into a crowded market place with explosives strapped to their body to blow themselves up and kill many innocent men, women and children. But in every such case you had a terrorism being taught by groups and organizations bound and determined to cause as much pain, suffering and destruction as they could. Because of this it becomes even more vital to have those who believe in peace, love and freedom to press and promote their ideal and dreams. The movements and marches for peace must be staggering in size and well sponsored, promoted and funded by the whole community. For when all the people promote peach, terrorists grow fewer and fewer in number and eventually disappear.

The only sane way for parents to raise their children is with a strong belief in love and peace, for the alternative, hate, war, destruction and death simply is insane!

You are welcome to share these thoughts with others as every seed of love that can be sown today will bring forth a few more peace symbols, a few more rainbows and a few more flower children in the future. I think a parent should be proud to have their son or daughter flash a peace symbol and send forth a smile from twinkling eyes to strangers instead of marching forth armed to the teeth, breaking down doors and firing a stream of bullets, often not even understanding the language of those who are their enemy. Going to war with a culture when you do not even understand their language or customs is extremely ignorant and a mistake that has been repeated throughout history.

So tearch your children well. One day they may have to go to war but let's hope not. Today it is a blessing that they can march for peace. Tomorrow there may not even be a choice. Again, let's hope not. The way to make that hope a reality is to teach our children love and peace now for if we don't that which we dread, a horrible worldwide war, with death counts in the millions, even hundreds or millions, is more possible.

Peace and love,
Terry Lynch