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    a way only with a good thrashing.  "Spare the rod and spoil the child"

    was a deadly serious maxim.111

    The youngsters of England in those days displayed a brutality

    the Bedouin would have understood.  They tethered chickens in the

    yard, then pelted them with stones until the tortured creatures finally

    died.  They burned cats alive.  They pitted animals against each other,

    encouraging the beasts to tear each other limb from limb.  And all of

    this was considered good, healthy fun.  Said one approving poet about

    cock-throwing--tying a bird to a stake or burying it up to its neck in the

    ground, then letting school-children stone it to death--"'Tis the bravest

    game."112

    When the 16th and 17th Century British reached adulthood, they

    didn't get over their love of violence.  Englishmen set dogs on bulls for

    sport.  The dog would clamp its teeth on the bull's nose, tear off its ears

    and shred its skin.  In the end, either the dog would slash the bull's

    throat, ripping its jugular and killing it slowly but painfully, or the bull

    would gore and trample the dog to paste.  One way or the other, the

    crowd would be amused.113

    The British didn't restrict their delight in pain to animals.  They

    whipped and hung their criminals in public.  And huge audiences

    showed up with picnic baskets to watch.

    But a few hundred years later, the British ganglion of memes

    evolved, and parents changed their mind about how children should

    be raised.  They offered a bit more affection.  Soon the scenes of

    brutality in English streets came to an end.114

    In much of Arab society, the unmerciful approach of fathers to

    their children has still not stopped.  Public warmth between men and

    women is considered an evil.  And a disproportionate number of Arab

    adults, stripped of intimacy and thrust into a life in which vulnerable

    emotion is a sin, have joined extremist movements dedicated to

    wreaking havoc on the world.

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