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YAY! The highly restrictive gun ban in the District of Columbia has been lifted. Fantastic. Really. Having lived just outside of DC I’ve had a seat with a view to the “Murder Capital” of the nation.
This morning I heard Eleanor Holmes Norton saying that life would get more violent because criminals are better shots than legal gun owners and more people would die. I hate to be the one to tell you, dearie, criminals haven’t refrained from killing someone because they are NOT armed. They may, however, think twice about assaulting someone packing. And to be honest, the responsible gun owners I know spend time at the range, think through gun safety and don’t normally bring their weapons along on a trip to Burger King. (Unless they have a concealed carry permit, which is another subject.)
The squeals I hear about guns being easier to get are fallacious and ridiculous. There is no dearth of illegal guns in the District because the criminals, law breakers, break the law to obtain them. And will continue to do so. Law abiders will obtain their weapons legally, get legal training in their firearm and store them legally. Some won’t, but then legal drivers using legally purchased cars sometimes drive drunk and kill people.
More importantly, SCOTUS put the constitution above an unconstitutional law, good prevailed. It is a bit worrisome how narrow the decision was, that it was 5 to 4.
The International Herald Tribune has a story about Hugo Chavez grab for intellectual control of his citizens. He is steadily turning his country into the kind of horrid place that Cuba, China, Cambodia, Romania and the Soviet Union was/are, where people are forced to turn in their neighbors, family, parents and children for “anti-government” sentiment.
Separation of powers, the three separate branches of government - legislative, executive and judicial - all necessary to a free and open society. (Which we have.) Socialists can not have a free and open society, they can not effectively meddle in private lives if the meddled can protest and be heard.
One part of the new law, which explicitly requires judges and prosecutors to cooperate with the intelligence services, has generated substantial concern among legal experts and rights groups, which were already alarmed by the deterioration of judicial independence under Chávez.
While the language of this passage of the law, and several others, is vague, legal experts say the idea is clear: justice officials, including judges, are required to actively collaborate with the intelligence services rather than serve as a check on them.
“This is a government that simply doesn’t believe in the separation of powers,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director for Human Rights Watch, the New York-based rights organization. “Here you have the president legislating by decree that the country’s judges must serve as spies for the government.”
That’s just scary, thank you very much.
Read the whole article.
And then there’s this bit from Russia.
On a talk show last autumn, a prominent political analyst named Mikhail Delyagin offered some tart words about Vladimir Putin. When the program was televised, Delyagin was not.
His remarks were cut and he was digitally erased from the show, like a disgraced comrade airbrushed from an old Soviet photo. (The technicians may have worked a bit hastily; they left his disembodied legs in one shot.)On a talk show last autumn, a prominent political analyst named Mikhail Delyagin offered some tart words about Vladimir Putin. When the program was televised, Delyagin was not.
His remarks were cut and he was digitally erased from the show, like a disgraced comrade airbrushed from an old Soviet photo. (The technicians may have worked a bit hastily; they left his disembodied legs in one shot.)
Now, he stops short of Stalin’s methods, first the death then the altered photos. The altered photos are quite enough, especially when it erases dissent.
Yes, children, I despise communism and socialism. Have a lovely day.
This past week end, for those of you with your heads buried in the sand, or stuck on American Idol* or Keeping up with the Kardashians*, a cyclone struck Burma leaving destruction in it’s wake. First estimates gave the death toll at 22,000, a terrible number. In the normal course of events, a government would do whatever it could to help the people survive.
Unless, of course, it’s the military junta that currently reigns in Burma. So far they have refused aid, taken what foodstuffs that did manage to make it in country and refused to notify it’s people of the pending storm. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of people are dying, suffering and starving.
None of this is surprising if you’ve been paying attention. Last year, thousands of monks were slaughtered. Before that, the Burmese have kept Aung San Suu Kyi under arrest for years and oppressed it’s people for years since the junta took over in 1989.
Years ago I was introduced to Burma through a tiny restaurant in Chinatown in Washington, DC. Last time I looked, it was gone. I ate the most ambrosial mango pork curry, an ethereal stew that made me happier than I can remember. I discovered it again later at Mandalay Restaurant in Silver Spring, Maryland. That pork mango curry was enough to give Burma a spot in my heart forever. Later I learned about Aung San Suu Kyi, learned of her sacrifices and strength. Of course I’d remembered the Burma Road, from WWII fame.
Many more people will die this week. Rain will be falling again shortly, flooding already flooded villages, washing more bodies into already fouled drinking water sources, spoiling any remaining food that wasn’t spoiled last week. Current estimates at the eventual total death toll of Cyclone Nargis are at 500,000. One half of a million people are expected to be dead before this horrible event is over. The Indian Ocean Tsunami killed 250,000, spread across many nations and several continents. I can only imagine the loss in intellectual, cultural and familial knowledge. Add to that the loss of fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, neighbors…..it really is more than they can bear.
My father suggested that perhaps the junta is allowing all these people to die because they intended to kill them anyway, it’s just cheaper to let mother nature kill them than to spend the bullets. I don’t know. I just can’t imagine any other reason why the extraordinary suffering is allowed to continue.
I’m praying for the people.
*I hate these shows. A lot. I’d rather shove needles in my eyes than watch them.**
** Except for the audition episodes of AI. After those, I refuse to watch it.
From an article in The Independant:
For two hours, the villagers were standing in water up to their waists. “There has never been a storm like this before. This is the first time,” said another man, Ko Khin My Aye. He said that when the storm struck he had been on his boat, which was tied by rope tight to the trunk of a coconut palm. While he and his family survived, some friends and an aunt were among the dead. “There were many, many children. We could not hold on to all of them.”
That last line breaks my heart. I can not imagine the heartbreak.
If you’ve spent any time reading this blog you will have discovered that:
- I think Global Warming (as stated by Algore, many Newspapers, and many others) is a crock, an attempt at a new religion that requires throwing virgins into volcanos (metaphorically, it’s the economy of every first and second world country that gets thrown in, not to mention the effect on all third world countries when everyone else is in the crapper).
- I believe that the earth is a planet, not my mother.
- I do not think that climate/weather/shifting patterns of weather are controlled because I use one or two squares of toilet paper. (Thank you, Sheryl Crow, for that most cringe inducing suggestion. I just vomited a little.)
This is how I will celebrate Earth Day:
- Lobbying for more drilling in the US of A, please pretty please can we just drill in ANWAR already?
- Nagging my congress persons for more local nuclear power plants. (For crying out loud, if the French can manage to build safe ones, and since no one was actually hurt at 3-Mile, can we just get on with building safe, productive, CLEAN, nuclear power plants?)
- Lobbying for more coal burning. (Why? Because the less oil we burn for electricity the less we import, the less we import, the….well, you figure it out.)
- Driving, alone, in my own personal vehicle to work. Both ways. AC on, windows down.
- Mocking all the hilarious hippie types who dance barefoot worship a large, molten cored, spherical spinny thing. (That would be the earth.)
More importantly, I’ll be celebrating the lovely Charlotte’s Birthday. Since Charlotte lives in South Africa and I can’t drive to her home, both ways, alone, in my car with the AC on and the windows down, I’ll be doing something much more funner. Toasting to her health! YAY for Charlotte! YAY for her Birthday!!
For two reasons, my friend, HRH, The Queen does not have thyroidoidoid cancer, Thank you, Jesus!!!!!
The second reason: Mugabe may be out in Zimbabwe. Oh, I hope so, I do hope so.
Read the whole thing here. Mr. Chetwynd, allow me to salute you. That was a masterpiece of forgiveness and a clear teaching of the foundations of civility and civilization. Seriously. Thank you. Your letter reminds me very much of a hero of mine, Corrie Ten Boom.
Corrie lost nearly all her family in Ravensbrück and at the brutal hands of the SS. She held her sister Besty as she died in Ravensbrück, thought murderous thoughts at the female guard who beat Betsy. Before she left the concentration camp, released by a fluke of paperwork (read God’s gracious intervention), Corrie came to understand that there is no pit so deep that God is not deeper still. Later, after the war, Corrie was speaking her song of forgiveness and courage in the face of horror and pain around the world. At the end of one talk she was confronted by one of the guards who had abused Corrie, her sister and countless others, coming to ask her forgiveness, to tell her that he had repented and become a believer. Corrie struggled to forgive this man, struggled to make herself take his hand. She did repent of her unforgiveness, hardness of heart.
It was not for her ancestors that Corrie’s righteous and unrighteous rage was boiling, it was for her, her family, the people around her. How do you forgive the person who beat a friend to death with a rifle butt in front of your very eyes? With the help of the Almighty and a will to do the right thing.
I do not contest the history of this country in regards to the abuse and degradation perpetrated against black men, women and children. But that is in the past. The vast majority of people living here are not descendants of slave traders, owners, abusers. It is time to forgive, to start fresh, to believe that “Typical White People” don’t exist. We are not a homogeneous mass of faceless, soulless abusers. Rachel Lucas is right, you want equality - take it, but to do that, Rev. Wright, Sen Obama, you must forgive the past and release your ‘right’ to be angry forever.
Hat tip to the Lovely Dana for the Chetwynd letter. Dana, you rock, do you know that?
Lots of opinions, lots of anger and lots of hatred infect all issues surrounding the current all conflict in the Middle East. We can argue over the origins of the violent conflict, but in the end it comes to tolerance. No, I don’t mean that stupid politically correct “tolerance” that actually isn’t. That, correctly defined, is a fit, yes, a fit. The kind that a little child has when it doesn’t get it’s way and when it is denied sweeties. Tolerance as used today really means that YOU must accept ME at all times and in all ways and refuse to challenge ME at all about anything. If you do, then you aren’t tolerant. I, however, can rag on YOU about anything I want to, because you must tolerate ME. If YOU have any standards of behavior or a moral code, by definition, YOU can not be tolerant. All bets are off if you are currently a white Christian, you are intolerant before you ever open your mouth, period, don’t bother.
Actual tolerance is really the biblical virtue inherent in the second commandment as defined by Christ, “Treat your neighbor as yourself.” Which means being respectful of someone being who and what they are, NOT accepting and conforming to their belief system without question, but allowing a difference to exist, just the fact of a difference. It also means that when I have a difference with you that can not be overlooked we approach in peace and discuss how to handle the difference, how to mediate or how to part amicably. It doesn’t mean that hard things can’t be said, that relationships aren’t broken. It means that HARSH and VILE things are not said, and that no one ends up dead. Saying hard things is often the only way truth can come out, subtlety is usually wasted, no one ever gets it.
So, while I sit here a world away from the flying insults and rockets of the Middle East, I will pray for peace, but an actual peace, and for wisdom and truth to rule.
More to come…….
A teacher in Colorado has been suspended for comments made in class. He is a geography teacher, in geography class, and he harangued his class on the evils of the current administration, calling George W. Bush Hitler. I’m not sure what that has to do with geography, but I’m glad he’s not a history teacher.
It happens constantly, especially lately, someone calls Bush Hitler, says someone else is a Nazi, likens something to a concentration camp, calls the people killed in the Twin Towers “Little Eichmans”. All these descriptions are incorrect, all of them used for the shock value alone, all of it horrid propaganda to try to guilt people in to agreeing with a view that is questionable in it’s logic and so must resort to name calling and labeling to get a misguided point across. And they get away with it. How is that? It’s because people have a myopic view of themselves and a twisted view of history. How else can it be? If you think you are put upon, censored, and discriminated against, it follows that you would make that analogy. But are those feelings valid? Are you just being required to face the natural debate of a free society? (I have a censorship soapbox speech for another day.)
Hitler and the Nazi’s were a singular evil, they are not “like” much of anyone else. They used German industry, know how and 400 years of building anti-semitism to produce a war machine that systematically slaughtered millions. Nazis were voted into power and then took over in a coup. They outlawed being a Jew, a gypsy, a homosexual, senile, insane; retarded and deformed people were also outcast. The Nazis deliberately and with great precision rounded up all the “undesirables” and shipped them off to work camps, and if they couldn’t work, to death camps. The goal of the Third Reich was to dominate the entire world and make everyone else a slave to the Aryan race.
That isn’t George Bush or the Republicans. You may not agree with the policies of this administration, you may not like what they do or say, but you can not begin to honestly compare the two. To do so is to so greatly inflate your feelings about an issue so as to have committed a war crime yourself. By comparing the two and calling them the same you have cheapened the truth of the holocaust as to render it a little thing. It was not a little thing. 12 million people were ripped from their homes, divested of all they owned and murdered. That number is only the dead, remember that it does not include the millions upon millions who survived the death camps, the marches, the slave labor, or the ones who hid, living as fugitives, in the hopes of surviving hell on earth.
There are no medical experiments, no vivisections, no tortures for the joy of torturing a Jew, homosexual or Christian caught hiding Jews. None of that is going on.
To play the Nazi card you have to know what the Nazis did, actually did, even then, you had better be careful. Robert Mugabe is such a one. Look him up. Just because you feel something strongly doesn’t make it so. Calling a person a Nazi is an insult that is nearly unforgivable. Don’t do it.
The Iraqi Election
Yesterday was an amazing day in Iraq, they held a third election this year, the first for the provisional government who would write their new constitution, the second to ratify that constitution, written in an amazingly short 7 months, and yesterday they elected their permanent parliament. How cool is all of that? Way. Considering that we didn’t have a constitution in place until September 17, 1787, eleven years after we declared independence, and the government wasn’t in place until March 4, 1789, I think the Iraqis have done an amazing and Herculean work to get a ratified constitution and an elected parliament all within the span of a year. Now, I do understand that communication and transcription technology is quite updated from the days of our own Revolution, but the wrangling over policy and law is unchanged from that time, people must discuss and discuss and talk and talk and talk until an agreement is made. That just takes a lot of time.
Below is a poll taken in Iraq in the days before the election. Very, very interesting.
The War - Here, There and Everywhere
Just a few thoughts on the American response to the war and the results of the war itself.
There & Everywhere
Afghanistan - Is anyone else astounded that there is barely any news coming out of Afghanistan? Does anyone else understand how cool this is? If there were an increasing number of terrorist attacks, you can bet your sweet bippy that someone who hates the US would pounce on it and run with it. Actually, Afghanistan is doing quite well, women are able to vote, get an education, dance, own a business and all just four short years after a most repressive and brutal regime of Islamo-thugs tried to squish them flat and breathless.
Iraq - See above.
Egypt - Did anyone notice that Egypt held an election as well, that women also voted in this and that it was an actual election? Rather cool.
Libya - Remember that Qaddafi suddenly gave up his WMD’s without a fight. Yeah, I remember that too.
Lebanon - The Cedar Revolution was crazy wonderful. Syria is out of Lebanon. Hurrah!
Here
One of the reasons I think Americans don’t support the war and don’t really understand it is that it hasn’t cost us enough. NOT in lives, that’s not what I’m saying. But in time, convenience, effort, even pocket change, we aren’t investing in the War on Terror. We are Monday morning quarterbacking it. Now, do I think we could have vetted the intelligence more? Yes. But considering that for the last 10 years EVERYONE has said that Saddam had WMD’s, and that small amounts of WMD’s WERE found in Iraq after the war and that there is good reason to believe that the missing WMD’s are in Syria, I still think it was the right thing to do. Both Iraq and Afghanistan are better off, as is the world. We don’t see the cost in money because we already pay taxes, no one is selling war bonds. We aren’t growing victory gardens, we aren’t rationed for oil, we aren’t sending our stay at home moms off to the Boeing factories. We don’t have to, we are so much more fantastically wealthy than we were in 1941. In fact we Americans are amoung the 5% most wealthy people on the planet. All of us, except the poorest and they are amoung the top 9%. We are no longer used to sacrificing for anything, and so when it isn’t immediately and easily granted to us, we not only lose interest, but we want to take our toys and go home.
Since my nephew just got back with nary a scratch from Iraq, I can’t say that my family has sacrificed. My nephew in law got back a few years back from Afghanistan, also without injury. Are we more fantastically blessed than we deserve? Yes. I am forever grateful to have them home safe. I am also incredibly and deeply grateful for ALL the men and women who serve us in far-flung places, and I grieve deeply for the losses. All of them. But it’s worth it. Freedom, liberty, justice, all three are worth fighting for. Don’t forget that we have found thousands of mass graves in Iraq, many filled with just women and children, skulls with a bullet wound in the back of the head, that families in Kurdistan are just now getting word that their hopes for the return of The Disappeared are forever hopeless. Saddam himself was a WMD, he caused immesasurable suffering to his own people. It’s okay to me that the Iraqi’s want us to leave, that’s great motivation to get up to speed all the faster, but what on earth do we have all this power for if it is not to remove murderous tyrants like this?
Hopefully we will go after that nut in Pyongyang and the monster in Africa soon.
The Economy
I’ll come back to this. Suffice it to say, I think we are doing well. Overall, people, not everyone is doing well, but most people are.
The Ambassador
Read this for an update on John Bolton’s work in the UN. YAY for Mr. Bolton. So far, my favorite diplomat.
The article is yet another reason I refuse to limit my reading of the news to one source. The MSM in this country would be one conglomerate source in my eyes.
There is a wonderful mysteriousness to God, his plans are not our plans, and his ways are not our ways. His total otherness to our humanness and the mystery of the incarnation are impossible to wrap our brains around. In Job God doesn’t answer Job’s why questions with answers, but rather reminds him of who God is and what he is. “Dress for action like a man; I will question you, and you make it known to me.”* God says. Then “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements - surely you know!”* For the next two chapters God asks Job all these, to us humans, unanswerable questions. Those chapters come at the end of Jobs long lament for his lost children and they have been invaluable to me over the years, keeping me humble when my pride threatens to overwhelm me. God reminds me that he is in charge and I am not, that his perspective is not mine and that he really is in control of all things and does as he pleases for his own reasons and that I can’t possibly understand or comprehend him. I know that he judges us, I know that I don’t understand him.
After Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in late August I heard rumblings in the Christian community of Gods judgment on New Orleans for it’s sins. I also read a story that some al Qaida terrorist boys had celebrated the storms vast damage and dubbed it a private in their little army of terror. They saw the destruction of New Orleans and the rest of the terrible damage as proof of God’s wrath against us, Americans for being the Great Satan.
Actually, I think coming from a puny human with a highly limited understanding of the workings of God, (and I include everyone still breathing as a puny human) that it is a dangerous and proud thing to engage in declaring something a judgment from God. Considering that we just don’t know unless he comes and reveals that clearly and evidently to many people, it would seem highly prudent to remain silent on what God was doing when a disaster strikes.
So what is our response to be? Compassion, obviously, go help in anyway we can. How do we explain the whys of a disaster? You don’t because you can’t. Really, you can’t. You can say that there was a recurring cycle of higher cyclonic activity as was last seen in the 50’s, and that we are just going through a high period. That is true. You can say that the Gulf waters are very warm at that time of year and that contributed to the strength of the storm, that is true as well. Why did it hit where it hit? Only God knows. And then leave it there, there are no other answers. Considering that we don’t even slightly understand 1% of the wheres and whys of weather, I think it is wise humility that lets it be.
When the terrible earthquake hit Central Asia this past week and killed thousands, I cried as I watched the mothers and fathers search for their children in the rubble of crushed schools, knowing that their babies were most likely dead and praying that they would be found. But I didn’t think that this earthquake in anyway was a result of the general sinfulness of the people who lived there or as a heavenly referendum on the Muslim faith. I am a Christian and I have strong convictions about ways to God and salvation and where it is from, I just don’t see that when people are hurting and dying it’s time to step into a blame game, rain falls on sinner and saint, move on. It’s time to show where your faith is and who you serve. I didn’t see the hurricanes as a sign that God is more especially ticked at the Gulf states than he is at the rest of the country. I don’t see the tsunami’s, mudslides, earthquakes or flooding that wreak havoc in our world as anything other than a call for us to show mercy. If God has another meaning in these events, it’s up to him to make that clear, not me, my marching orders from him are to comfort and to show mercy, not to judge a case that is far beyond my scope of understanding.
Sure, there are some things that made the flooding of New Orleans worse, the MR-GO waterway being one, and the poor construction in Pakistan that made those buildings unable to withstand an earthquake. Those are things we need to look at and learn from.
There are just some times that should remind us that we are dust, and we will return to dust, and that we stand in the way of the awesome power of nature and of God. Even more importantly, especially when tragedy stikes, we should refrain from assuming the mind, heart and purposes of God, purposes we can not possibly be privy to.
*Job 38:2 -4 English Standard Version
This is a rant on the British, one of our best allies, or so I thought. Until I heard something so terrifyingly silly I had to rethink the meaning of that word.
In the aftermath of the London bombings one British official had the following to say when questioned about Londonistan, the concentration of terrorism preaching imams in the local mosques, read carefully, the silliness may shock you, “We thought that if we were nice to them they wouldn’t harm us.”
Can you imagine? These terrorists think nothing at all of lobbing a bomb at their own people, from blowing up car bombs in a schoolyard, to ramming jets full of innocent people into buildings full of innocent people, but apparently if you are nice and give them a lolly they won’t mess with you. Not only is that scary thinking, it’s also deadly wrong.
And another thing, thank you so much for allowing the very sort of preaching that gave us Osama Bin Laden’s World Tour, 1995 - Present. If you are my ally, I expect that at all times you do not allow speeches encouraging the death of my family to be given with any kind of regularity, I especially do not expect that you will give these nutballs visas and allow them repeat access to your country AND that you would pay for their medical and dental plans. That’s a bit over the top for a marginal “ally” like France, but for one of our closest allies, it’s abominable behavior. Inexcusable folly, really.
I am sad that London was bombed, and in no way do I think that the people injured in the attacks were asking for it. But I do think the British Government was.
Former FBI guy, Mark Felt, revealed this week that he was “the man” who leaked all that information to Woodward and Bernstein at the Washington Post (henceforth WaPo.) Mr. Deep Throat came out of the closet. Great. Expessly for money. Even better.
Mark Felt was J. Edgar’s poodle at the FBI, groomed to take over when Hoover died. When that happened, Nixon passed him over for the top spot and soon after Mr. Felt was breaking every oath he had ever sworn to out him. Funny, to me it doesn’t look like heroism, just a big case of poopy pants. There were other, and legal, options. Today it’s easy to say it just would have been too hard to take that evidence to the Grand Jury, or to say that if he had, the information still would have been suppressed. The problem is that Mr. Felt didn’t even try to do things the right way and through proper channels. He had taken an oath not to reveal classified information. He broke that oath.
Bob Bradlee, editor of the WaPo, has some interesting ties to JFK, cover-ups and such, that in light of the evisceration of Nixon on his watch are rather hypocritical in nature. He too is looked as a hero, as are Woodward and Bernstein. Whatever.
The left has often pointed at Nixon as proof of the corruption on the right, and in a gesture of fairness, I’ll give them that Nixon was unprincipled and uncouth, actually, not even a nice guy. But now in that same gesture of fairness I’d like to point out that nearly every democratic president from FDR on has acted the criminal. FDR stacked the Supreme Court, Truman overlooked and condoned Soviet spies in our midst, even to the highest levels of government, JKF, a drug addict, used his fathers methods and brother RFK to get things done that shouldn’t have gotten done including murder, LBJ, well, ick, there’s just too much. Carter’s missteps have come from bullheadedness and a petulance not seen often this side of the woobie, but as far as I know he hasn’t been charged with anything. Okay, except a case of stunning and stellar blindness, like when he said that Venezuela’s recent election is more democratic than our own. (What planet is he on anyway?) WJC, well, it starts with sexual harassment, misappropriating FBI files, the rape of Juanita Broaderick and we can just keep going from there. Remember that he was disbarred, you know, lost his lawyers license because he broke the law and lied under oath. On the Republican side you have Ike, one of the most honest politicians ever to inhabit the White House, Reagan, say what you will of Iran-Contra, he ended the cold war, and 41, he got us into GW1, and got us out again, but he made that “read my lips” mistake. Say what you will of W, his tenure is unfinished, and we still have to see what the WMD thing was all about.
One thing has always baffled me, the left’s hatred of the Vietnam conflict. All the protests, all the anger, all the “hawks and doves” junk, and it always looked to me that the left forgot who started, promulgated and LOST that “police action”. It was the left, that was their baby, if you look closely at Somalia you will see Vietnam on a smaller and shorter scale. That same fight-but-don’t-fight thing. We were in Vietnam because of the policy of “containment”, a leftist idea and a poor idea at that. It took Reagan’s vision to stop that silliness and bring an end to the coldwar. I just never understood all the anger from the left at the right over Vietnam when it was the left’s doing. Why didn’t those radical kids all go Republican?
Okay, so, back to Mark Felt. Is he a hero? No. And just to clarify, I’m not saying that Nixon didn’t commit crimes and wasn’t a mediocre president. What I am saying is that selling out your boss because you didn’t get a promotion and then outing your self as the mole for profit doesn’t fit the definition of a hero. Like I said, poopy pants. If Mr. Felt was still on the playground he would have been roundly pounded.
A hero looks like the firefighters who run into burning buildings when every one else is running out. And like Abdul Amir, who gave his life to protect his fellow Iraqi citizens so that they might vote. And like Amy Carmichael, who bought children being sold into prostitution and raised them as her own. And like the Ten Boom family, who built a secret room in their home so they could hide Jews from the Nazi’s and get them to safety. And like the men and women in uniform fighting a world away to give a people not their own a chance at peace. All these people are just ordinary folks who act admirably and bravely to aid others at great personal and physical peril. That is the definition of a hero.
http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=8254
http://www.nationalreview.com/interrogatory/kessler200506010934.asp
In 1900 four journalists in Denver sat down to figure out what kind of blockbuster story they could come up with, but it would be a hoax. The story that ran was about a local contractor winning the bid to tear down The Great Wall of China. This story was picked up by the international press. It was all fun and games until the story got to China. In a land already inflamed by fear of foreigners and a fastly imploding ruling class, that was the spark that set off a year of slaughter. The Boxer Rebellion left many innocent dead, including many Chinese.
Now if any of this sounds eerily familiar, you may have heard about the the riots, the calls for jihad and the 17 deaths that have resulted from the fictious bit piece in Newsweek’s Periscope regarding the supposed desecration of the Koran in GITMO. Now, however much Newsweek apologizes for their error in reporting an unsubstatiated rumor, they can’t fix the havoc wreaked by this rumor taken as truth. It was absolutely irresponsible of them to print it, especially with out fully vetting it. Good luck trying to get the truth out there, Muslims won’t believe it, neither will the progressives. Both love conspiracies too much to hear the truth.
Lately, freedom of the presses is translating into slander, rumor-mongering and libel, and it begins to look more like abuse of liberty than freedom of the presses. CBS, The New York Times and Newsweek have all been guilty of making up stories to suit their political ends. But now it’s begun to cost the lives of innocents a world away. Just like it did in China a century ago.
Liberty and freedom are costly things, they come with a hefty price tag. One of the costs of liberty is the responsibility to use it wisely. Freedom of the presses means only that the government can not tell you what you can and can not print. It does not mean that you can print just anything. It means that with careful research, vetting and honor, you can choose to run stories that will matter, make a difference and inform. You also have a responsibility to weigh the outcomes of printing a story. It’s called self-editing.
Hmm - Part 1
So let’s say that your daughter steals some money from you then goes on a bike ride with her best friend when she’s supposed to be home grounded, what do you do? Probably stabbing the girls a total of 30 times and beating the heck out of them and leaving them to die in the park wouldn’t be high on a rational parent’s mind. But to Jerry Hobbs it made sense. He says he was mad that she was out WITH her mother’s permission ON Mother’s day, and that her friend pulled the knife on him. Yeah, right. Dude just got out of prison, I’m totally sure he could have disarmed a 9 year old little girl with out beating the crap out of her then turning the knife on her. Sheesh, he could have run back to her mother and told on her.
Hmm - Part 2
It’s 2005, right? If you live in the Washington DC/New York, NY area, which includes Pennsylvania, and you were able to vote in 2001 you remember life before the terrorist attacks and you can now tell the difference. One thing would be the extra security around buildings, much of which was actually put in place after the Oklahoma City bombing. Another change would be the much expanded no-fly zone around Washington’s power center. Now if you are a pilot, even of a small Buddy-Holly-Lawn-Dart Cessna, you would be aware of the extensive no fly zone AND of the stated intentions of the US Military to shoot down any aircraft straying into that no fly zone and failing to respond.
Now read this wee little paragraph:
“The Cessna pilot appeared confused by the aircraft escort and did not respond to repeated signals ordering the plane to turn away. The F-16s fired four warning flares before the Cessna finally veered west and away from the secure zone.” (from My Way News, story linked below)
Some student pilot and his teacher from Pennsylvania wandered into the no fly zone and were seconds away from being shot and killed AND THEY DIDN’T RESPOND? Why? Maybe they turned their radio off or just didn’t like the “tone” of the F-16 pilots and ground control. What ever, they are obviously too stupid to be allowed to fly, maybe even drive. I’m not sure what’s really confusing about an F-16 wagging it’s wings at you and acting threateningly, they are fighting aircraft build for war after all.
Also, I’d like to point out that Washington DC has a VERY distinctive aerial look. It’s not really like you can miss either the Appalachians on one side, the Potomac in the middle and the Chesapeake on the other side, or DC itself.
Now, I know I spent some time just a couple of weeks ago defending life. And I still do. Really. However, there is a difference between ridding yourself of an unwanted baby, wife, pope, by murdering them and administering the proper punishment for a crime committed. At least I hope you see a difference.
See, a convicted sex offender is likely to offend again, child sex offenders even more so. Terri Schaivo was never likely to do anything other than draw breath in and then press it out of her lungs for who knows how long and not much more, perhaps not to your standard of living, but she would not be perpetrating any crimes. Your average baby will also not be committing crimes, at least not until it reached 12. Sex offenders, i.e. rapists, pederasts, pedophiles, molesters, are guilty of criminal activity. Criminal activity as defined by all religions and nearly all cultures. Usually they are also guilty of crimes of violence as well, certainly when perpetrating against children.
In case you missed it, the autopsy for Jessica Lunsford and a bit of the transcript of Mr. Couey’s confession were released earlier this month. That poor little girl died a horrific death, she was raped and then bound, then buried alive within shouting distance of her grandparents and father as they searched for her. The villain who did so was committing several crimes at the time he committed that crime. He had not re-registered with the local police. That may or may not have made a difference whether little Jessica lived or died, but just maybe it might have. There is suspicion that she was alive when police first approached that house to canvas for the missing child, hopefully had they know of the prior proclivities of one resident of that house they would have searched it until they found her, BEFORE she died. One might be brought to wonder if Mr. Couey would have allowed himself to entertain the thoughts that led to the actions that led to Jessica’s death. The point is that the consequenses for not registering weren’t enough to make him register. Why do we expect that the law will be abided by a committed law breaker? (His other crime was that he was abusing an illicit substance when the rape and murder took place.)
In the weeks after Jessica’s body was found there have been multiple stories of other children stolen, raped and murdered in other places. Before this happened there were too many stories of missing and dead children preyed upon by a twisted and peculiarly unredeemable group of criminals, the sex offender that perpetrates against children. It will happen again. And we allow it to happen again because we continue to try to stop the unstoppable with ineffective means. These criminals have to be contained and restrained by other methods. The only effective ones that come to mind are life in prison or death. I prefer life sentences for those offenders who don’t kill and death for those that do. Period. First offense against a child under 12, you are in prison for life or you are dead. No appeals for parole, no second chances. They can reform all they like while in prison, but they can never again be confronted with access to the object of their twisted and evil desires.
I woke up early this morning to watch the funeral. Quite an amazing rite for quite an amazing man. A lovely spectacle, carried by telecast around the world, even into the hearts of darkness in China and the Muslim world. (Did anyone else see the feed from Al Jazeera? I wish I could read Arabic.)
Let me declare here first, I stand firmly in the Reformation, declaring “Soli Deo Gloria”, et all. In no sense do I wish to join the Roman Church. But I have heard and read a number of rumblings in the evangelical community about the Pope, how the papacy isn’t a biblical office, etc, lately as well as reminders about all the stuff about Catholicism that we Reformationists protested, selling of indulgences, the veneration of Mary, the elevation of the priesthood, celibacy of the priesthood, mixing works into the gospel of grace, etc. Mostly concern about the current popularity of the Pope, concern that popularity will dilute the gospel of grace.
I can appreciate that concern, but from where I sit, today it is popular to like the JPII, and will always be. What I don’t see happening is a mad dash to the Catholic Church from Evangelicals. He won’t be as popular in a month, or on everyone’s mind and lips in 6, and in a year, he will be fading from view in the rear view mirror. Which in my opinion is criminally shameful. But that is what will happen. Everyone suddenly loved Reagan when he died too, but dems didn’t rush out and convert to the GOP. (Logical choice, I know, but alas, loving Reagan didn’t help them think more clearly. 
I would like to state here that I believe in some very specific things the Romans have it right and we have it wrong. There is an ancient majesty to the old rites that draws our gaze to the agelessness of God. We can worship God in spirit and in truth through observing those old rites and understanding their foundation. We miss that when insisting upon the latest worship music played upon the latest technology. It isn’t that other of God’s truths are not proclaimed by worshiping in the new ways, they are, powerfully. But I would submit that we miss our history, the amazing history of how God has sustained his church through wars, civil upheaval, famine, disease, invasion and persecution. Also, we can learn about and understand more of God’s King-ness through HIS veneration. Yes he is Father, that is how Jesus taught us to pray. But he is Father-King, and not something other, these two are together rather than singular. As C.S. Lewis says of Aslan, He isn’t safe, but He is good, that’s the way we should view God. There are ancient meanings behind the traditions of the Catholic Mass, it would behoove us to discover those meanings. I also think there is a much needed place for monasticism in the Protestant church, but that is a discussion for another time.
So, all that to say, I am not concerned about the Pope’s current place in the pantheon of popular dead people. He really did accomplish some amazing and incredible things in his lifetime. He lived through two of the harshest, cruelest dictatorships in world history and emerged from them a man of God, committed to peace. Not a pansy peace, but real peace, rather, the kind you stretch your neck out for. He reached out ecumenically to heal rifts and wounds that, frankly, needed healing. He never, as far as I know, sold out his understanding of what it was to be a Christian. Karol Wojtyla as Pope John Paul II reached out to sinners as an ambassador of Christ. I think he was an amazing role model.
R.I.P.
When you see it, you know. It’s that story on the news that makes you sit up and take notice, realizing that you are seeing something big, really big, and you know that you have to soak in every detail, every nuance, because you want to remember. There are lots of stories like that for me, and probably for you too. The Challenger Accident, Tiananmen Square, the Fall of the Berlin Wall, the Bhopal Accident, the Execution of Ceaucescu, September 11, 01. And now added to that list are the protests in Lebanon.
The brave citizens of Lebanon have so far forced the Syrian-puppet PM Omar Karami to resign and now they are turning their efforts to rid their country of it’s Syrian oppressors. Lebanon has been under occupation for twenty years, in part because of the actions of Arafat and the PLO after Jordan kicked them out for doing exactly what they did in Lebanon in the early eighties, run terrorist missions into Israel. The subsequent response from Israel and the continued actions of Arafat destabilized Lebanon and opened the door for Syrian dictator and Moscow stooge, Hafez Asad to declare Lebanon his own. Syria has had troops on the ground, has hand picked governments, and has brutally repressed the people of Lebanon.
Now the people are rising up against oppression, as they have in Ukraine, Poland, Romania, etc. I can’t wait to see what happens. I hope they win!
A bit of history
http://www.lgic.org/en/history.php#h5
BBC Coverage of Lebanon
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4306925.stm
In case you don’t know him, you should get acquainted with Abdul Amir. Or, to be more precise, get acquainted with his story.
Abdul Amir was a 30 year old Iraqi policeman, which means that he is a relatively new officer who doesn’t have the background of free elections, free government, liberty, value for life and a strict sense of equality that we Americans take so much for granted. Mr. Amir could only have remembered the tyranny of the Hussein regime where it was the rule of the strongest and most violent, not the rule of law. Sunday, January 30, 2005, Abdul Amir offered his life to ensure that his fellow countrymen and women had the opportunity to vote. He noticed a man carrying something heavy under his arm walking towards a polling station, Mr. Amir grabbed him and dragged him away from the group preparing to vote. The detonation of the homicide belt killed both men, one a thug, the other, a hero. Living in Baghdad, Abdul Amir could have had no doubt that his very heroic action would cost him his life, and perhaps only a razor thin hope he could disarm the thug. Who knows, Abdul is dead. I hope he is never forgotten, that his name is remembered in Iraq the way we remember our founding heroes. So far there are hopes to rename the school where he died after him, maybe even erect a statue.
May we all remember the many, many lives lost in pursuit of liberty, ours and theirs. May we never ever forget that peace is purchased by blood, that continuing freedom is bought by never relaxing vigilance, that liberty can only rise from the ashes of absolutism and tyranny, never from the smoldering remains, that the sword is not sharp for no reason and must be bloodied to be useful for those it protects. Lastly, may we never forget that self-sacrifice is the standard our Creator meant for us to follow.
http://homepage.mac.com/demark/tsunami/9.html
This link will take you to some sobering pictures of the damage. It’s all before and after pictures of the areas most affected by the Indian Ocean Tsunami.
Some of these places look scoured, villages wiped clean of all living things and their belongings.
The full horror and scope of loss of the Christmas Earthquake and Tsunami’s are a long way from being realized. The numbers are just too high to imagine and the sorrow attached to numbers is meaningless because we just can’t wrap our heads around it. Unless you have lost a loved one yourself, or several, but to lose 30 or 40 family members, plus half your town AND your home in one day is unimaginable to us in the west.
Or it would be if nature didn’t keep plodding it’s way through the world and our lives. Yesterday I watched the images from California of floods and mudslides and read the stories of loss. Of course, the damage in Cali is on a much smaller scale, and we have the on-site resources to rescue the injured and trapped. Our infrastructure is such that we are able to still send help and our country is at peace so that aid workers need not worry about rebels shooting them. Even in the midst of a terrible disaster we still are so much better off than so many other places in the world.
I would submit however, that the California man searching desperately for his wife and children beneath the rubble of a mudslide and the Indonesian man searching desperately for his wife and children under the rubble of an earthquake and tsunami have significantly more in common than any differences they may have. They are both gripped by grief, fear, horror for what their loved ones may have endured and a dying hope for their safe return. Their arms ache to hold their babies again. They are both going through a loss that is more than they can bear.
The aftermath of the California floods and mudslides will be relatively short, it will be quickly cleaned up and we will move on. The Asian countries will have a longer clean up, and they won’t be able to move on as quickly. Entire towns are gone, many are missing, too many people to continue, and so the town will die shortly after many of it’s residents died. In a few years these things will be remembered, more sharply by some, less so by others. Wait a few decades, there will be legends and stories, our memories will grow dim. That is how we are, humans that is.
If that were not so we would all be huddled in a small space in the middle of Germany refusing to go anywhere. Are there not villages on the slopes of Pompeii? Is California still home to the priciest real estate in the USA? People still live on Japan’s islands, build homes in the Mississippi Flood Plains, and start towns in the Turkish provinces prone to earthquakes. Those places will be inhabited again, maybe not for centuries, but they will.
But today the pain is still unimaginable.
Iraq:
It’s all so interesting. The news I mean. When I watch the network news all I see is death and destruction and accusations of the Bush administration. Then I turn on Fox News and see a press conference from the head of USAID, a part of the state department. He is pleading with the reporters to please run stories on what they are doing & accomplishing. He said they have over 1000 projects currently running, that the infrastructure is improving, that electricity is now on in most homes 12 hours a day and should be on for 20 hours a day sometime in January. That they have rebuilt numerous schools and medical facilities. He also pleaded for them to remember that the infrastructure they are struggling to restore had been neglected by the Hussein regime for 20 years while he amassed wealth and murdered his own people. He said that many of his co-workers, including many who are in the field in Iraq, disagreed with this war. The ones who come back from working in Iraq to see what’s on the news are outraged and distressed to see that nothing that they have accomplished is reported and that the view of the war is distorted. hmm. (Please forgive me, I don’t remember the man’s name or the correct name of the agency, except I know that it is part of the State Department.)
France:
Algeria and Ivory Coast. Both former colonies of the French, both in chaos. hmm. And now tonight there is a report of a massacre at a protest in the Ivory Coast. hmm And then there are charges of bribery in the Oil for Food program. Hmm. Other reports coming out of France indicate some serious cultural issues are looming for the French and their imigrant population. hmm. In fact, all of Europe seems to be in the grip of losing their identity to imigrants and they are fighting back, passing laws limiting the number of imigrants, specifyingwhat jobs they are allowed to have. hmm. This is all just interesting.
The UN:
The more I read about the UN, it’s dealings, who sits on the security council, who sits on the human rights council, the more I wonder if this body is really the most effective way to deal with the world-community. We can’t go back and isolate, it’s a century too late for that. In a perfect world, where all countries are democracies and the leaders are duly and fairly elected, we could hope for real thoughtful consensus and truly helpful intervention. That’s not what we have. Right down to their “diplomatic immunity” that allows the “diplomats” to ignore the law, the UN acts as a corrupt institution. I get why diplomats need to have a level of immunity, but that immunity should not translate into getting away with murder, or even 1000’s of parking tickets. Perhaps they need a watchdog to be sure they get due process and are not persecuted or wrongfully charged, but being above the law has never once in the history of the world encouraged a free and liberated society. In fact, just the opposite.
I remember exactly what I was doing the day that tragedy struck at Bhopal, working in a pesticide filled greenhouse. When I got home that evening and saw the horror in India, I cried at all the death and destruction. Then I heard the name of the chemical and recognized it as one that we used regularly at the greenhouse, Sevin, found in Round-up. When we showed up for work the next day nearly all of us refused to enter the greenhouse, it smelled like chemicals and the dead faces from India were clear in our minds. Management told us it was okay. Nope, not going in there. We were screamed at, but none of us budged, the ones who hadn’t seen the news crept back out and, after hearing about the 2000 dead, refused as well.
Now, after 20 years, that incident still is a landmark for me. In human cost, thousands dead and thousands sick. It is overwhelming. The grossness of the company’s failure to compensate the survivors is overwhelming as well. From their website it is pretty clear they feel no need to care for those injured by the second most serious industrial accident of all time. (The first being a burst dam in China, at least according to the Learning Channel.)
I appreciate American companies going overseas to find cheap labor, cheap land, all that fun capitalist stuff. What I find detestable is that there isn’t a mind to make working conditions in these overseas plants better. Americans enjoy such an amazing quality of life that when we go overseas to make money we should be bringing that quality of life with us. Granted it won’t be up to US standards, but at least the basics should be covered. Stuff like plant safety, worker safety and proper chemical storage should all be a given.
While I am a conservative and think that regulations on private companies can become so burdensome as to make them unable to make a profit, I do think that some regulation is appropriate and needed. This kind of regulation would have to impose fines on American companies operating overseas when their operation costs lives, as in the case of Union Carbide’s Bhopal plant. Now, of course, it would have to be carefully and specifically defined. Since that is where government tends to bloat, I don’t see this as ever becoming a reality.
The best solution would be that these companies would hold themselves to a high standard, both in operation and compensation. I am sure some do. I don’t know anything about them, which makes sense. We never hear the good news, it’s the bad news that always gets the best press.
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