Try explaining terrorism to a six-year-old.

The topic comes up occasionally with my son. He knows some bad men flew planes into buildings and the buildings fell down killings lots of people.

He asks me if the men who did this went to jail. No, I say. They died when they crashed the planes.

He wants to see the octagon in Washington, D.C. Likes to watch the news. Sees how the people in Cairo stood up to a dictator.

I tell him how blessed we are to live in America where we can think, speak and worship as we see fit. I tell him religious freedom is why the pilgrims came to America in the first place.

I tell him how in some countries people can be thrown in jail or even killed for disagreeing with their governments or believing in Christ. How the men who crashed the planes wanted to kill Americans.

People like them who try to scare and hurt us, they are the terrorists.

My kindergartner has some suggestions.

“Let’s put up signs everywhere that say ‘NO TERRORISTS ALLOWED,’ and tell the soldiers to shoot the terrorists if they see them.”

I like it. When can we get started?

He designs a crab pit to trap the terrorists. “They would be eaten by the crabs?”

“No,” he says. “The crabs would pinch them.”

I doubt pinching by crabs will withstand the Third and Fourth Geneva Convention rules against torture, but I’m not telling him that.

Then there are the war games. To a little boy, every stick is a weapon and every bad guy is a target.

He loves soldiers, tanks, fighter jets and aircraft carriers. He wants to be a warrior, a knight and a jedi. Wants to save the puppies, the kittens, the wild animals, the babies and the people.

That, my friends, is the American way.

Call it hawkish if you want. Call it naïve.

But there is nothing wrong with being the good guys.

Nothing wrong with standing for freedom and protecting the weak. Nothing wrong with knocking the daylights out of evil and terror.

In the words of former Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), being lucky can’t be our national security strategy.

You who  love the LORD, hate evil! He protects the lives of His godly people and rescues them from the power of the wicked. Psalm 97:10 NLT

This post is dedicated to all those who work to protect our country.

Thanks to Robert Fulghum. His New York Times bestseller All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten gave me the idea for title.