I wish that I could take credit for having written this but I can’t.  The analogy is spot on and we would do well to learn from this.  Written by, who else? a Texan who loves this country.

Now the news media will spend days trying to determine why these men did what they did in Boston. They will want to know what America did to make these brothers so angry with us. They will want to know why these men were not arrested before they did something unlawful.  The media will be in a tizzy about the new era of home grown radicals and about how they could live among us and still hate us.

Here in west Texas, I have rattlesnakes on my place.  I have killed a rattlesnake on the front porch. I have killed a rattlesnake on the back porch. I have killed rattlesnakes in the barn, in the shop and on the driveway. I kill every rattlesnake I encounter. I kill rattlesnakes because a rattlesnake will bite me and inflict me with poison.  I don’t stop to wonder why a rattlesnake will bite me. It will bite me because it is a rattlesnake and that is what rattlesnakes do. I don’t try to reason with a rattlesnake. I just kill it.

I don’t try to get to know the rattlesnake better so that I can find a way to live with the rattlesnakes and convince them not to bite me.  I just kill them.  I don’t quiz a rattlesnake to see if I can find out where the   other snakes are because (a) it won’t tell me (b) I already know that they live on my place.  I don’t try to negotiate with them or hope they will leave me alone.   I just kill the rattlesnake and move on to the next   one.

I don’t look for ways that I might be able to change the rattlesnake into a non-poisonous snake. I just kill it. Also, I know that for every rattlesnake that I kill, two or more lurk out there.  In my lifetime I will never be able to rid my place of rattlesnakes.  Do I live in fear of them?  No!  Do I know what they can do to me?  Yes! And because of that knowledge I give them my fair justice… I kill them.

If, as a nation, we would recognize the jihadists as rattlesnakes and get rid of them, we would be a lot better off.   Period.