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AIR DEFENSE FOR ISRAEL, BUT NOT THE US
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This week, American Patriot missiles were put on
alert for a possible Iraqi missile attack on Israel.
There is a lot of debate about the effectiveness
of Patriot missiles. But Israel's defense is more
important than any question of cost, so they are
deployed.
Meanwhile there is a huge debate about the United
States deploying a missile defense.
Russia and the usual Communist states are attacking
the idea. So America liberals are attacking it.
So our NATO "allies" are attacking our
deployment of such a weapon.
During the Cold War, this same parade would attack
any effective new weapons deployment by the United
States. The neutron bomb was a classic case of this
alliance preventing a weapon that was distinctly
favorable to the United States against the USSR.
The Strategic Defense Initiative - renamed "Star
Wars" by Teddy Kennedy - was the idea that
finally broke the Soviet Union's will. Their technology
and economy simply could not match such a US system.
So Gobachev called on his liberals and his - sorry,
I mean our - NATO "allies." But Reagan
wouldn't yield.
But no one objects to our protecting Israel, its
seacoast, its land borders, and its air.
The only two places in the world where the First
World has a border directly on the Third World is
at the Rio Grande and on the Israeli border. American
Democrats are dominated by liberals, and they look
forward to plenty of third world minorities coming
into the US and voting for the left. The Republican
presidential candidate is fanatically in favor of
erasing that border completely to bring in cheap
labor.
Bush is for the missile defense, of course, but
only because conservatives are kneejerk supporters
of anything in a uniform.
Meanwhile, both parties are absolutely committed
to the protection of Israel's border. And both parties
would cheerfully kill to protect Israel from air
attack. Nobody in NATO has breathed a word against
that.
We spend billions each year to protect Israel's
ground borders, while our own are as open as the
government can get away with. These are policies
Bush will not merely preserve, but advance.
And Israel's air missile defense is sacred to the
United States, unlike our own.
I am against almost all military expenditures right
now. Neither Bush nor Gore will do anything with
American forces except push the liberal agenda.
I tend to favor a missile defense, because it protects
the United States, which is, to me, what the US
armed forces are all about.
My mild support becomes stronger when I see the
Communists and our "allies" - and, of
course, the liberals -- line up against it. These
are the same people who always lined up against
any military systems the Soviet Union didn't want,
precisely because they later proved to be effective.
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THE
UN DECIDES TO "USE" RELIGION
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The United Nations is hosting an ecumenical
religious gathering "to try to use religion for the
cause of peace."
Well, it's kind of ecumenical. The Dahli Lama wasn't invited
because China didn't want him there.
My hackles rise when anyone says he wants to "use"
religion. Mine are, after all, very old-fashioned hackles.
They are also Bible Belt hackles.
For me, religion tells you, as part of its doctrine, exactly
what it is to be "used" for. In the Bible Belt,
the purpose is to avoid damnation and to attain salvation.
I think a person has a right to believe in and preach
the Gospel of salvation. I also think a person has a right
NOT to believe in the Gospel of salvation.
What upsets me is people who do not believe in the purpose
for which the churches were established, but want to take
the money and influence generations of believers have
given the church and use it for their own goals. They
want to use what is God's to make their version of Caesar.
Modernist preachers who have lost all faith in Heaven
and Hell try to justify themselves by keeping their church
salaries and trying to "use" religion for some
"sophisticated" goal -- like peace.
One of my problems is that the founder of my faith said
specifically that He did NOT come to bring peace.
Those who consider themselves "sophisticated"
and those who consider themselves Modern and Ecumenical
do not understand what a triumph religious freedom was
for Americans. To them, refusing to fight over religion
is easy, since they consider it all a joke anyway.
In the real America, our ancestors took their religion
very seriously indeed. Most of them believed that having
the correct theology made the difference between eternal
joy and eternal agony. Religious freedom was not an easy
thing for them to allow, and it is a triumph, IF YOU UNDERSTAND
REAL HISTORY. To make this refuge for serious beliefs,
they had to give up imposing something they felt was endlessly
important.
The result is that we have a country that, among other
things, was the last best hope of faith against Communism.
In much of Europe, religion has almost died under the
burden of being state-sponsored.
For those who value faith, America's freedom of religion
has more than justified itself.
But there are those who insist that religion has no value
in itself. They want to "use" it for what they
consider "real" goals, as the UN is doing now.
They insist that what the Founding Fathers really meant
by "freedom of religion" just meant not taking
religion seriously.
Some years back someone at a Baptist Convention stated
that, in his opinion, God did not hear the prayers of
Jews. Naturally there were shrieks that he was "anaziwhowantedtokillsixmillionjews."
Freedom of religion, the Modernists said, means that you
can't take religious differences that seriously. Jews
constitute a minority, so you have to say that their religion
is as good as yours.
As usual with "modern," sophisticated"
opinion, this is not merely wrong. It is the OPPOSITE
of the truth. The fact is that if you cannot state publicly
that you believe someone is going to Hell or that God
does not hear them, neither freedom of speech nor freedom
of religion means anything at all.
You might as well say that "freedom of speech"
means that you can only state opinions that don't offend
others.
Most of the people I worked and marched with in politics
took their religion, or their nonreligion, AND THEIR RELIGIOUS
DIFFERENCES, very seriously indeed. In college, the anti-liberal
Young Americans for Freedom had one absolute requirement:
a member had to believe in God. The other strong ally
against the liberals were the Objectivists, who had one
absolute requirement: you had to be an atheist.
Being Americans, we had no trouble working together against
the common enemy.
In Washington, my regular allies included large numbers
of serious Catholics and serious Calvinists, and the members
of each group were convinced that the other was going
to Hell.
To a European, the fact that these groups were firm allies
against the common enemy would be terribly puzzling. But
to old-fashioned Americans, it has been routine for centuries.
Our ability to work together BECAUSE we take our religion
or our non-religion seriously is something unique that
Americans established. That is why it is so easy for Modern
people to confuse freedom of religion with freedom from
religion.
These self-styled "sophisticates" are very unsophisticated
people. Serious American Catholics are not shocked that
Bob Jones might consider their religion absurd. They return
the favor.
But what really shocks, astonishes and totally confuses
liberals is that these two groups, having freely put down
each others' religious doctrines, then turn around and
vote together, AGAINST LIBERALS.
Liberals simply do not understand America. They talk endlessly
about "sophistication" but they will never be
sophisticated enough to understand us.
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