Last week I read that five children had been tortured. This torture had been going on for a… Last week I read that five children had been tortured. This torture had been going on for a long time — long enough for starvation to stunt the children’s growth. One of the boys, 14, weighs less than forty pounds. The children reported a smorgasbord of kindnesses ranging from the relatively mild bedroom in a closet to having toenails pulled out with pliers.

Since there’s already precedent for U.S. military action to liberate — to protect — the United States should respond dramatically to these five children’s plight. I’m sure there would be objections from the more liberal minds in the country. The same minds that have disputed America’s right to other military actions over the years.

These people argued cultural relativism. Some even suggested that our great nation should respect other countries’ sovereignty. As touching as this sentimental ideology may be, no religious belief, political ideal or ancient tradition can ever justify the continued complacency of a society that allows children to be tortured.

So, Bush should ask Congress to declare war on Florida. For Florida is that far-off, barbaric land where John and Linda Dollar lived with their seven children. They lived with seven, and they tortured five. The favorites in that family were excused from being chained in the basement much the same way their neighbor’s favorite son was excused from doing the dishes.

I suppose here is where I should go off detailing the absurdity of a nation that spent an obscene amount of money “liberating” Iraq while the state home the Dollar children are currently staying in undoubtedly needs new paint and the stench of poverty just won’t come out of the curtains and carpets.

I should rant just to show I care, but it won’t accomplish much. Anyone who needs to be persuaded that more money should be spent caring for orphans or improving education or guaranteeing healthcare won’t be. And the rest of us are tired of reading it, hearing it, thinking it — we’re tired of everything but talking about it.

Hell, every high school has its sickos, and the U.S. has an awful lot of high schools. In a country so large and so dedicated to being the best at everything, it’s no surprise we’ve managed to produce parents who put their children’s feet in vices for no better reason than that the kids were “messing things up.”

Thankfully, we have a system that will cradle these mangled children. A combination of therapists, teachers and guidance counselors will provide the Dollar kids every chance to embrace the soothing mediocrity every American is entitled to. We even have prisons to house any of the children, should they choose narcotics to chase away their memories.

Ten years from now, that’s all that will remain of this ordeal: the children’s memories. They must endure those nightmares so the rest of us can enjoy our privacy and individuality: Had the children not been home-schooled, the teachers might have noticed the deforming malnutrition.

It’s amazing how we shake our heads at this tragic abuse of the American way without reconsidering the underlying principles.

A system of government that’s based on a holy text, however loosely or literally, is antiquated in American eyes, and the tragic status of any such nation’s people is clearly the logical result of this anachronistic political structure.

Yet, no one thinks to question our system of government. The ideals of freedom and equality were quite fashionable 250 years ago. Today they don’t do much more than provide those in control with a romantic past from which their power is derived.

Democracy has a safety mechanism built into it: It relies on the minority’s ability to rise into power when mainstream ideas prove inadequate. In a world where multinational corporations compete for the most complete control of our preferences, I’m not sure a sufficiently different minority exists to protect us.

At least those of us who can get jobs and loans and can avoid being tortured are able to enjoy the comfort that’s so much a part of America’s majestic image. And I guess the rest are left to enjoy the bleaker side of the majority’s tyranny.

Email Zak Sharif at [email protected].