Spelunka Leonis

America the Faithless

2008-04-27T10:20:00.000-07:00

When I read Richard Fernandez' post over at The Belmont Club I was again reminded of the magnitude of America's defeat in Vietnam. I was also filled with shame, grief and anger.

In 1971 I volunteered for the Navy after graduating from High School. Part of my motivation was the desire to prevent Communism from devouring another nation and locking it's peoples in bloody chains. I had already read a good deal about what the end results of communist takeovers did to the subject populations, how they were caged in prisons of the soul and ground down under tyrant's booted heels. I strongly believed that this fate ought not befall anyone, and that it was worth the price of my life to prevent it if I could. I was in Vietnam at the end of our direct military involvement, and returned to civilian life a few months after the fall of Saigon.

In the years since I've spent a good deal of time trying to figure out what really happened there. The more I learn the less I like what I see. This article pretty well sums it up. The Left got control of the narrative and things went to hell after that. There has been a lot of fallout since then (despite the statements of John Kerry), and just when I think it's finally over, there's more. America defaults on it's solemn promises and a people die. Not just a few people, but a people. We Americans have become a people without honor.

And here's the strange thing. The very Left that left the Hmong twisting in the wind (then closed their eyes to it, denied that it ever happened and shunted it down the memory hole) now wants to do the same thing in Iraq and Afghanistan. And in once again betraying America's solemn commitments declare that America will win renown and respect for it! I can see it now: America the Faithless Friend, the Betrayer of Oaths, the Traducer of Allies, America the Craven, celebrated throughout the world for her statesmanship and sagacity. America undergoing the Global Test! America acquiescing in every kind of wickedness and fellating every two bit tinpot tyrant in hopes of winning an approving smile and a Nobel Peace Prize!

Inconstant "friends" are never to be trusted. Alas, my country is one such.

Curiosity

2007-01-02T07:39:00.000-08:00

I have, since forever, it seems, noticed how much time I waste, but not as I'm wasting it. I've been aware that occasionally I get wrapped up in my addictive cycles which just burn time like crazy (fascination, avoidance rituals, indulgence, despair). Yet I periodically become aware that I have done nothing towards either achieving my goals or even decent daily maintenance, and am surprised, and doubly surprised as I know I have not taken a whirl on my baby-blue merry-go-round. Does this mean I've got a new addiction I haven't noticed before? If so, what is it?

A post by Gil Bailie at Reflections on Faith and Culture kind of woke me up. When I was in the CRICs, when custody of the eyes was discussed, I always interpreted that as "don't be watching the gorgeous cuties with your tongue hanging out." Withdraw tongue, close mouth, look elsewhere, think about bicycle chains or pine trees or sandstone or a text of Scripture or ANYTHING else. Eventually it got better, but the underlying tendency to be involuntarily captured at unexpected and awkward moments by the sudden and piercing awareness of feminine pulchritude has never really gone away, though it is thankfully much less frequent now and more easily dealt with (a topic for another day).

The root of sin, I have often said, is lodged in the wounds of the human heart, and all human hearts are wounded, forced as we all are to live in an imperfect world. I have found that as my heart is healed, not only does my propensity to sin decrease (or at least the kinds of sins that were the despair of my youth), but I find deeper wounds and a correspondingly deeper sin. All sin, is I think, an ineffective anesthetic, it promises to cure the pain, but in the end it only makes it worse.

So, what is going on here, why, and what to do about it?

I offer these few notes to help keep me honest and draw me back into the question when I'd rather be haring off after some other distraction.

Cargo Cult

2006-09-20T14:11:00.000-07:00

The more I look at it, the more the secular left appears to be a whopping

great cargo cult, hoping to achieve "humanity" without in the slightest

understanding what it means to be human.

Victims

2006-07-24T22:17:00.000-07:00

We in the West idealize the victim. We see others as victims, and we see ourselves as victims. The victim status confers status. So very naturally we seek that status, and to the extent that we identify with it we draw our self esteem from it. We look around for a victim niche to give us legitimacy, value, worth. We post-Christians, have embraced the Tree, but have repudiated He who hung upon it, we cling to the symbol, make of it an idol and spurn the salvation He wrought upon it.

No wonder our enemies despise us! We have embraced weakness and cast off strength, and called ourselves noble for having done so. We have done so because we seek to be compassionate. We feign compassion, which, bereft of relationship, vulnerability and love. To us, wrapped in our self congratulatory bacchanal, the other is no more than a prop on our stage, to be cast away when we tire of the act. "Give me that adulation the unconditional moral authority demands!" "Oh, you poor thing, you, let me stroke my ego by pandering to your victimhood."

The World seeks balance, and has raised up for us a mirror image. Having exalted ourselves by a sham weakness, there is raised up against us those who will, if we permit it, we hollow men, dstroy us with the invincible vision of their strength. We are too stupid to see them for what they are, but pander to them and debase their equally unhinged humanity by labeling them with the highest accolade we know. "You are a victim of all sorts of socio economic psychological deprivation! Let us stoop to you and bestow upon you the blessings only we can give, oh you unholy sainted victims! Let us understand your quaint non-Western ways, come bask in our unconditional multicultural regard. Come titillate us and we will condescend to you."

No wonder they hate us. They do not see themselves as victims, but as victors. Fired by the dark beauty of their demonic vision they long to destroy us who have lost ours, traded away for a pat on the head. Their lives have meaning, and they live it to the full. Their lives have passion and drink it to the dregs. And we, vacuous idolaters, stand paralyzed and agape, uncomprehending as they first utter then carry out their murderous threats. If this is indeed all we have become, we deserve the fate that will overwhelm us. And the world will be engulfed in a darkness fit to extinguish even Bethlehem.

On Both Sides of the Gate

2006-06-16T06:44:00.000-07:00

Last night I was teaching the Parenting Class and the subject for the lesson was "Gangs." As I listened to the remarks of various people, many of whom had had close encounters with gangs, the parallels between gang activities and the modus operandi of terrorists struck me quite forcefully. Typically, gang members recruit through intimidation, 'forcing' a prospective recruit in joining by threatening him or his family with violence. Once in, of course, the gang pretty much devotes itself to creating havoc in the community it claims as its 'turf', starting with the gang members' own families. Naturally this kind of intimidation also keeps the neighborhood quiet as well, "Say anything and we'll get you."

Interestingly these are the same tactics that the 'insurgents' have been using in Iraq. They enter a community, kill a few people, kidnap a few more, and basically take the place over by reducing the locals to fearful, quiescent, compliant cooperators. This is what they are doing in the Sudan, this is what they did in Afghanistan. But it is not simply a question of "these" particular bad guys we don't like doing it to these other folks here or there. This is a pattern of how evil works in the world. This is what the Vietcong did in Vietnam. This is what the Gestapo did in Germany. This is what the Bolsheviks did in Russia. This is how evil cows people the world over. This is how civilization is stripped away and life becomes not worth living.

The Belmont Club has made the point that the so-called War on Terror is actually not a war on a method, nor is it a war against a revived Islamic Fascism, but a war against all those forms of criminal gangsterism that seek to create chaos in order that they might profit from them. This is an anti-civilizational movement that has always been with us. At the moment the focus on those criminal elements which hide behind the veneer of Islamic fundamentalism and are focused on the destruction of the United States. There are others, and although the US is certainly a popular target, it is not the only one.

The fact is that the forces that seek to destroy civilization are not just the ones we met in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania on 9/11. Those same forces are alive and well in the midst of us, although their goals are not so grandiose, nor are their resources so vast. Consider the 18th Street Gang, which has become the largest gang in the country last I heard. They are engaged in drug trafficking, arms smuggling, murder, kidnapping, extortion, prostitution, etc. with links to the Mexican Mafia and other organized crime syndicates. They are alive and well and thriving in our midst. They are not alone. The toll from the activities of these terrorists (make no mistake about it!) within our own society in terms of money, lives and human suffering far exceeds that spilt in Iraq, yet not a voice is raised in complaint. It is positively surreal.

I've seen a lot of people yelling about the injustice of the United States being the world's policeman. Two points to make about this: 1. Policeman, police thyself; 2. before you dismiss the policeman from his beat, consider what the alternative is.

On the Toons Madness

2006-02-07T15:08:00.000-08:00

Much has been made of the recent reaction to the Danish cartoons in the Muslim world, almost as much as was made of the Danish cartoons in the Muslim world. The reaction to the cartoons is, of course, insane. First, because the issue lay dormant for four months until certain imams went on tour to promote the issue. Secondly because images of the prophet have circulated at various times and places since time immemorial without raising this kind of stink. Did the Muslim world riot when historical books in the west depicted the prophet? Did the Muslim world come unglued when an image of Mohammed was put on the U. S. Supreme Court building? Did the Muslim world spontaneously combust when images Mohammed were printed in Time magazine? Not that anybody noticed. Of course, at those times there don't seem to have had government sponsored organizers egging the mobs on. And of course, the mobs are happy to go nuts on command, beats watching the flies buzz around, I guess.

Note to self on a business opportunity: manufacture, import and sell the national flags of Western countries anywhere with a Muslim majority. Just for laughs, soak one in every 72 with fire retardants.

Why now? Why the four month long Silence of the Imams? It seems to me, to promote the agenda of the Islamists. It has been said by many that what Islam needs now is a good, old fashioned Reformation. Others have suggested that they had one, and that Wahabiist Islamism are the results. As a Johnny come lately, Islamism needs to demonstrate it's power and dominance in the Muslim religious world. What better way than by defining themselves as the most righteous of all believers? And who wants to lose that righteousness contest? Of course it is also possible that those other purveyors of Islamic righteousness are using this as cover to distract the West from the development of nuclear arms.

As all this gets commented on there is a curious division of opinion developing. On the one hand are those who say, "Will you look at that! Those folks are nuts, and they are even more nuts if they think that they are going to tell us what we can and cannot say and publish!" On the other are those who say, "Well, we know that this stuff upsets them, so we ought not to do that. We know they are nuts so we have to be sensitive."

Among those leading the "Sensitivists" is Hugh Hewitt, who asks a very interesting question in his blog (http://hughhewitt.com/archives/2006/02/05-week/index.php#a001261): "Are we at war with Islam? Do you want a war with Islam?" I agree with him that the sane answer is, and ought to be "No, and No." Unfortunately this tends to lead to a kind of self censorship imposed not by a genuine adherence to our own principles, but a pandering to the overwrought hypersensitivities of those who exploit their capacity for infantile histrionics to accomplish just exactly that end. War is a terrible thing, I know, I've been to war. Worse than war is to have succumbed to the dictates of foreigners without having done battle for one's own interests and one's own integrity.

But the question is ill posed. In 1941 America did not want the US to go to war with Japan. But that is just exactly what happened. Since most folks didn't want war with Japan (Hugh does not allow mention of the struggle with the Teutonic side of that affair, so I will omit it for his sake), why then did that war come about?

It came about because certain ideologies took hold in Japan (and in that other place) which were inimical to the United States and the Western Democracies. People espousing those ideologies rose to positions of such prominence and power and so as to dominated the culture at the time that they hijacked entire nations, reshaping them to mirror those ideologies. Those ideologies, Militarism in Japan (some other ism in Northern Europe at that time), rose up on the strength of their representative nations to pose a mortal threat to the United States and the world. American reluctance to confront those ideologies was laid aside and we defeated those nations, put an end to the ideologies and then helped those nations restore their own native national identities in peace.

I suggest to you, gentle reader, that Islamism, a pernicious totalitarian ideology, is attempting to capture the religion of Islam. I do not think it has entirely succeeded as yet, may yet fail to do so, or it may succeed. The Islamists have brought war to us, and would have both Islam and us believe that they are the true face of Islam. That is why they must be faced and fought, or they surely will be the face, the voice and the bloody hand of Islam. I do not for a moment believe that we can influence that struggle within Islam (weak and dislocated as it may be) by pandering to Islam as a whole or to the Islamists in particular. Doing so will no more achieve peace in our time than Chamberlain did at Mun . . a certain city in Europe.

Antagonizing the Muslim peoples of the world will surely not help either. The Danish cartoons were not antagonistic, but were seized upon by Islamists and used as propaganda. The West is very vulnerable to this kind of thing as so much of our open societies can be used as agitprop. If we censor ourselves, imposing a virtual sharia on ourselves out of fear of causing offense, we are self betrayed, self defeated.

We must hold to our own values with integrity and courage. If wicked men hate us for them, well, that is their affair. If they will not grant us the same tolerance we not only grant them, but which they demand that we grant them, so be it. If it they choose war and start it, they will have it, rue it, and die for it.

We'd rather not have war. We've done it before. We'll do it again if we have to.

Peace With Honor

2005-06-28T19:05:00.000-07:00

Clearly the best of all possible worlds is for the United States to be at peace with the people of Iraq and of the world. It is in the vital national interest of both countries and the civilized world that peace come through victory, the victory of the United States and our allies over the forces of lawlessness and Fascism. The now fashionable and all too common tactic of using any and every possible pretext that can conceivably be construed or mis-construed to damage Mr. Bush and the Republican Party regardless of the damage it does the welfare of the United States and its allies must be strongly condemned. This is pure agitprop straight out of Comintern's old play books. That is has succeeded in undermining the United States in the past, due in large part to the unflagging efforts of the Fourth Estate, is no credit to either the purveyors of politicized disinformation nor of those who slavishly pander to their misguided and malicious political sleight of hand. A policy of defeat has in this manner been perpetrated on the American people once before, with disastrous results for all concerned. Those who propound such non-solutions to difficult but not intractable problems do not deserve the public trust and ought to recuse themselves from the semblance of public service.

The American people do not deserve to be led by short-sighted and cowardly opportunists. The American fighting man does not deserve to be once again grist for the mills of petty political advantage. The friends and allies of the United States do not deserve to be once again betrayed to suffering, persecution and death to serve the politcal aims of the far Left who see their greatest gain in America's greatest loss. This war was brought to us on September 11, 2001. During its course to date American diplomacy and American arms have achieved notable victories which will be studied with gratitude by generations to come. The fact the ultimate victory, nor the set path to ultimate victory, can be seen with clear and concise certainty does not by any means indicate that such a victory will ultimately elude our grasp. The fact that there have been and will continue to be errors, misjudgements, underestimations and mishandlings does not mean that we are inextricably sunk in a military and moral morass, still less does it detract from what we have so far accomplished and will accomplish.

Those who choose surrender, those who claim defeat, those who would lead Americans by half truths, bald-faced lies and pure fantasy fiction into a shallow and illusory safety must be named what they are: blind incompetents, shameful cowards and out-and-out traitors. Failure of courage, failure of nerve, failure of vision, failure plain and simple, is still unacceptable failure, no matter how gaudily it is gilded and loudly lauded with the accolades of "peace with honor." The only peace with honor worthy of the American people is the total, utter and abject defeat of our enemies, never of ourselves.

Litiginous Americans Abroad

2005-04-04T21:38:00.000-07:00

Hat tip to Consul-At-Arms

POW Claims Bump Into Foreign Policy

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23576-2005Apr3.html

On Jan. 19, 1991, in the opening days of the war to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupation, Air Force Maj. Jeffrey Tice's F-16 was shot down over Baghdad. Over the next six weeks in Iraqi captivity, Tice was repeatedly beaten, subjected to electric shock and left in a dirty cell with meager rations.

To this day he suffers from nerve damage to his hands from being tightly handcuffed, and he still has occasional nightmares and flashbacks.

In April 2002, Tice, now a retired lieutenant colonel, and 16 other former POWs and their families sued the Saddam Hussein government in U.S. District Court in Washington. Iraq refused to contest the charges, and in 2003, Judge Richard W. Roberts determined that the plaintiffs were entitled to $959 million in damages, which would have to come from assets now controlled by the new U.S.-backed Iraqi government.

The good Consul seems to be of the opinion that this massive award is a good thing, I argue the contrary.

1. The award is either a. compensatory, intended to restore the status quo ante or b. punitive, intended to teach the government of Saddam Hussein a painful economic lesson about hurting people or both. In the present instance the status quo ante cannot be gained by any amount of money. A tenth of that amount would suffice to do all that can be done for these people. Saddam Hussein is being taught a lesson of another sort. I do not see the point in penalizing an entire nation once the offending individual and his regime have been forcibly removed from power; if anything, go after his family wealth and that of his cronies.

2. Granted that the US has not been most generous to ex-POWs, nor even to it's own military veterans in general. Making 17 of these poor devils obscenely rich does nothing to ameliorate the situation of thousands of others. If vast sums of money are to be expended let them be expended to expand the common good.

3. Foreign policy objectives are important, but so are our veterans (I should hope so, I'm one of 'em). Small unit actions such as the one mounted by these 17 individuals in the courts should not be permitted to adversely jeopardize the outcome of an effort in which hundreds of thousands of men and billions of dollars are dedicated when doing so adversely affects the national interest. No, that does not mean that they should simply sit down and suffer in silence, it means that a conscientious government ought to take their welfare in hand until such time as adequate compensation can be obtained from the proper source without undermining the national goals. If the government is unwilling to do that, take them to court.

Side Effects of Middle East Democracy

2005-03-04T20:46:00.000-08:00

The Middle East is in fermet with the notion of democracy. The realistic possibility of that supported as it is by the United States (the Prime Democracy) and (even!) Europe has just about everybody moving and shaking in some way or other. It occurs to me that one of the beneficial side effects of the spread of democracy, however imperfectly, is that it compels the jihadis to spread their resouces in reaction to it, thus dilluting their efforts. Sound military principle, that, forcing your enemies to react to your initiative.

Unfortunately the events in Indonesia cannot make me smile (Bali bomb mastermind gets 30 months for murder of 202). At the moment the jihadis have the upper hand there, and the whole area is their playground, as much as if not more than the Middle East has been. Soon I hope, more attention will be paid to this area, as it is a swamp of radical islamism.

Blogs may well save democracy.

2005-01-28T01:27:00.000-08:00

Chester over at The Adventures of Chester was commenting on the the relationship between the blogosphere and the Main Stream Media. Granting that everything he says is basically true, I have this to add:

Blogs may well save democracy.

To be effective a democracy needs informed citizens. Further, it needs citizens with the capacity for critical thinking. To date the MSM was virtually the only means available by which citizens could inform themselves on the issues of the day. Many of out here have noticed for some number of years now that the MSM has not been a reliable provider of accurate information, consequently citizens have not been able to make truly informed decisions.

Facts, opinion to the contrary, do not stand by themselves, they must be put into a context to be understood. Events need to be analyzed. Until now the MSM controlled not only the facts, but the context. The knowledge and experience of millions will be available to all. The power of the genteel demagogues of the MSM to sway the credulous crowds and stampede citizens is gone forever (well, I hope so, anyway). They tried, and for long succeeded, in shaping the minds of nations. No more.

Knowledgee, it is said, is power. There is truth to that, for without knowledge the people are powerless. But that is not the whole of the matter, for it is not sufficient to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. It is also necessary to act. Having removed the power to direct action from the MSM the blogosphere places it squarely in the hands of the citizens. Further, action implies responsibility, which in turn implies accountability, both sorely lacking in the ancien regime and now restored to us, the people.

As a Christian, I see in this (Going All Mystical Alert!) the Hand of God at work. If the Church (understood as widely as possible) as the Body of Christ guided by the Holy Spirit, then I say that we see before us idols being cast down and God, through the Holy Spirit, is at work among His People. The oracles and prophets of the MSN rightly tremble; they stand stripped and feckless in the crumbling temples of the Department of Truth.

God in the tsunami

2005-01-22T20:55:00.000-08:00

A friend recently asked me "Where was God in the tsunami?" The assumption being that as the deavastation was so enormous and widespread God was nowhere to be found, leading to the conclusion that either God does not exist or that He somehow dropped the ball.

I note that devastation and loss on whatever scale is irrelevant to whether God exists or not. The world as created by God is good in its existence and generally in its workings. A world that exists is better than one that does not. The way the world exists involves change, some changes are going to be swift and widespread, though mercifully few fall into this category. The fact that the world is changing is good, the alternative is a static world. A static world cannot develop or improve, a world that can improve is better than one that cannot. The fact that some changes are inconvenient to the inhabitants of the world is unfortunate for them but irrelevant to the world considered as a whole.

In this sense the world as we find it is a perfect world, as its imperfection contributes to its greater, though never complete perfection. The fact that it is uncomfortable for we humans who have the wit and means to complain about it is in fact part of the goodness of the world. Imagine a "perfect" world in which humans suffered no inconvenience or discomfort. What would it look like? It would be a world in which everybody had a dry cave, enough game and other provender and would contain no nasty people eaters. Because it is perfect it would remain that way forever because it would need nothing more. The fact that the world in painful at times and that we have the means to do something about it has led to the kind of world in which virtually no one would be satisfied to live in a cave and go hunting and foraging every day.

All very well, you will say, but the fact is that a lot of people died and a lot of people are suffering as a result, what of that?

A lot of people die every day, on that particular day an unusually large number of people died of a single cause. Death is inevitable, without exception birth is a death sentence; death is no stranger to our nature. Yet we rightly fear death, not simply out of a desire for life, but because we are made in the image and likeness of God and so have within us a spark of the Immortal for whom death is utterly alien. Generally when we die those whom we leave behind grieve our loss (the saddest thing in the world is a funeral with no mourners), all the more so when the dead and the mourners are so numerous. In every age and place men have tried to peer through the veil of mortality and discern what lies beyond. The success of that that endeavor can only be attested to by those who have made the journey, and they, having passed beyond our ken, are unperceived by our mortal senses.

Yet faith, hope and love persist, binding us still to those awaiting our company there beyond. We all believe that somehow our life matters, there is or was a plan for us and our death marks a place where a portion of that plan was accomplished and the servant, more or less instrumental to the plan, has been called away to other matters. What that plan in the mind of God may be is further beyond our understanding than the launch of the space shuttle is to an ant on her appointed rounds (not one drops unnoted!). Whether we passively accept or cry injustice the design of God is implacable, inscrutable, and contains us all.

But not without compassion. I have seen that while dying is usually hard, the moment of death is frequently suffused with grace. I have no reason to doubt that those shores that morning were more drenched by grace than by the wave. Nor were the dying alone touched by it. Mercy was much in evidence as survivors repeat tales of miraculous escapes, as often as not assisted by others, those servants who played their part for those who have parts yet to play. Nor was grace stoppered on that day, for all across the globe millions stood aghast as the magnitude of the catastrophe unfolded and they - we! - poured out and continue to pour out compassion and generosity both material and spiritual on those afflicted. This too is no small act of God.

Where was God in the tsunami?

God is all over the tsunami.

2004-11-14T13:00:00.000-08:00

I did my homework and finished The Belgravia Dispatch (http://www.belgraviadispatch.com/) Foreign Affairs (http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20041101faessay83603/robert-w-tucker-david-c-hendrickson/the-sources-of-american-legitimacy.html) reading assignment. Unfortunately I have not done my html homework so I don't know how to link things properly, the reader's indulgence is begged.

Anyhoo, the authors rue the Bush Doctrine which has robbed the US of legitimacy in the eyes of the world.

The Foreign Affairs article's pretence to balance is too thin to stand. The four pillars of legitimacy were not always and everywhere acknowledged, but challenged at every opportunity by those Powers whose aims went against the Western industrialized democracies and their allies. During the Cold War the Soviet block specifically sought to de-legitimize the US and its allies, and to cast the cloak of legitimacy around itself, its policies and its deeds. Even before that struggle ended the situation was changing, not unexpectedly so. Every tin plated two bit tyrant sought cover in the cloak of legitimacy, and was increasingly given, to the extent that they suceeded in dong so, a respectful hearing in international forums, the UN being the biggest and the best.

The result of this has been the creation of a double standard wherein the US is held to a nearly impossible standard of policy and conduct to which other states merely pay lip service, and to which no one expects them to adhere in practice. The examples of this are too numerous and tragic to enumerate here, but be it noted that they are conveniently overlooked by the UN at large. As the universal whipping boy, the US serves to fund the UN and it's ostensible goals while taking the blame of the failure of those goals naturally resulting from the many UN members who covertly (or not, it is sufficient to CLAIM to Political Correctness) undermine them.

Thus the notion that the US has become an international pariah on account of its unilateralism is false on two counts. First it the notion that the US is without friends and allies in the world, Kerry's bribed and coerced, the list of allies belies this. The second is that the US has had the love, admiration and respect of the international community up till the neocons squandered it by their unilateral, militaristic cowboy policies. Much of US foreign policy has had as its aim the gaining of that love, admiration and respect, a strange weakness of ours, a policy which has proved to be not only fruitless but actually detrimental, and is irrelevant to our national interest in any event.

In fact what is happening here is that the US is once again accepting its position of leadership in the world. Pandering to the world's petty tyrants is not in our national interest, leading the world is. It is only to be expected those moved by envy, avarice, pride and lust for power should resist this. After all, it is in their short term national interest to do so, and there is great advantage to be had from those who know how to exploit the chaos of a leaderless or weakly led world, as Saddam showed us so well.

In the end, a world in chaos is a world in midst of a power vacuum; power vacuums do not last long. Should the US fail to shoulder the leadership of the world community on its own terms, there are those who will do so on theirs.

2004-09-23T18:16:00.000-07:00

I was listening to Nicholas Berg's father today on the Michael Medved show, and was disconcerted. It's ok that he is a pacifist and that he deplores people killing people, any time for any reason. Now, I admire a man who, based on principle, chooses to refrain from the use of violence in self defense or the defense of others. Of course we understand that this means that he would also deplore violence being used in his own defense (or that of his son) by anyone else. This kind of commitment to non violence is laudable, and is ideally the stuff of which conscientious objectors are made of.

There is a problem here, though. The problem is not that he personally believes that people killing people is wrong. Hell, I deplore people killing people. The problem is that Mr. Berg’s kind of pacifism demands of others that they forego or foreswear the natural right to defend themselves as best they can. He demands that America not use force in defense of her citizens. He is in essence telling me that, should my family be attacked, I have not the right to use violence to defend my them.

I categorically deny that anyone has the authority to tell me that may not defend myself, my family or may country using any and every means at my disposal. On the contrary, it is my duty to defend not only me and mine by any means, but to defend any who are in need of defense. I don’t get to walk away from acts of injustice, regardless of who perpetrates them on whom.

Nicholas Berg’s death was a disgusting horror, and I deeply regret his loss and condole his family in their sorrow. Were Mr. Berg’s policies to be implemented Nick Berg would be at the narrow end of a growing cataract of blood that would wash away Judeo-Christian civilization . . . for starters.

2004-08-18T16:54:00.001-07:00

Over the course of the last century every time the West has won a victory over those who threatened their survival peace, safety and security was declared. Inevitably another threat arose, never quite from the anticipated direction, though the seeds had been planted and germinated and extended tendrils of malign growth. I do not doubt that should we, the men of the West, again defeat the barbarian hordes that beat against our walls, another breed whose bloody eye and steel is not extant today will arise in due course.

Centuries wash across the eons civillizations rise, hold their niche a while and fall, leave their sedimentary bones to prop their tottering successors. Of a certainty our time will come. But not yet. God give me strength, not yet.