What chance for a child?

So they have found the body of the little Girl in Florida, Somer Thompson, who disappeared recently.

And I wonder: What chance for survival does a child have in a society where ...

"...Beseler ... said police have questioned more than 70 registered sex offenders in the area, and that process was continuing. Florida Department of Law Enforcement records show 161 offenders live in a 5-mile radius of Somer's home."

I am sure that people who get their thrills out of exploiting and hurting children have always existed. I know from reading the literature of Imperial Rome that this horror infested their society, too.

So what to do? Kill them all -- the extreme conservative position? Lock them up forever? Work even harder to solve the social ills that breed this sort of person -- the liberal position?

One thing is certain. This cannot go on. We are doomed, flat out doomed to destruction if we don't do something. There is no doubt about it. No society can hope to survive in which its children can't walk a mile home from school without being snatched and killed. No society can survive in which parents must live in constant fear, never able to allow their children out of their sight. No society can survive in which people convicted of hurting children number not in the dozens, not in the hundreds, but in the thousands and perhaps even millions.

As children, not only my uncle, but my Mother, too, thought nothing just a few decades ago, of taking long hikes alone, of unsupervised camping trips, of exploring their world to the fullest.

As a child, so did I.

Today's child will never know such joy. Today's child is no better off than some Ice Age youngster, who had enemy tribesmen, slave raiders and wild beasts ever lurking beyond the edge of the village. Today's child is perhaps even worse off, because their enemies live within his or her own village.