Abraham Lincoln --- The Great Emancipator

Robert Louis Stevenson --- Epitaph

Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie
Glad did I live and gladly die,
   And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
   And the hunter home from the hill.

The Establishment Clause and Religious Freedom

      "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . . ".  Thus begins the  first amendment to the United States Constitution, which we call the Bill of Rights, consisting of ten articles, eight of which spell out the rights to be protected from encroachment by  Congress.  The ninth amendment reminds us that the list is not necessarily complete because rights are endowed by God and constitutions do not create rights, they protect them.  And the tenth amendment reserves to the states or to individuals the burden of protecting rights which are not specifically listed in the first eight amendments. 
     That is the Bill of Rights, ten articles which are perfectly understandable in principle, though the details in some cases must be filled in by the courts as they consider individual cases.  To illustrate, what precisely is Due Process?  For example, granted that a defendant has a right to counsel if accused of a crime, does that include the right to free appointed counsel for those who cannot afford to pay a lawyer from their own pocket?  In Gideon vs. Wainright the Supreme Court ruled that it does because otherwise, in many cases, the right to counsel would lack content and be meaningless for some people.  However, merely because judges are called on to exercise judgment does not mean, and never did or was intended to mean, that they can read into the law their own personal ideas on the way society should be structured.  Judges were not intended to be tyrants or dictators.
     Yet radical organizations like the ACLU, aided and abetted by liberal judges, have turned the first sentence of the Bill of Rights, with its simplicity and obvious meaning and intent, from a protection of the indivdual from the tyranny of forced religion into a war on religion, primarily Christianity.  Every president from George Washington to George Bush has asked for the recognition by the American people and their government of the dependence of America on Divine Providence for its freedom and prosperity.  As President John Kennedy stated in his Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961 "The rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God". There have been hundreds of such statements by presidents, congressmen, governors and, yes, even judges throughout American history.  In 1789 President George Washington complied with the request of both Houses of Congress, made by joint resolution, "to recomment to the People of the United states a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be obersved by acknowledging with grateful heart the many signal favors of Almight God, . . .".  President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered that there be inscribed on the mantlepiece in the State Dining Room in the White House a prayer composed by John Adams and contained in a letter to his wife Abigail;  "I pray Heaven to bestow the best of blessings on this house and all that shall hereafter inhabit it.  May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof".  The Declaration of Independence, authored principally by Thomas Jefferson, declares that man is endowed by his Creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Harry Truman said to a conference of attorneys general; "The fundamental basis of this nation's laws was given to Moses on the Mount.  The fundamental basis of our Bill of Rights comes from the teachings we get from Exodus and St. Matthew, from Isaiah and St. Paul.  I don't think we emphasize that enough these days", and in quoting Psalm 127 John Quincy Adams reminded Americans that "Except the Lord keep the city the watchman waketh but in vain".  That passsage was to be read by John Kennedy in the address he would have delivered in Dallas had he not been murdered by a madman.  Similar sentiments are to be found inscribed in state capitals, courthouses, public libraries and monuments throughout the United States.  Yet this is the nation which liberal judges tell us cannot tolerate a simple, wholly voluntary prayer by a small child in a public school class room, or a cross over a soldier's grave in the desert. 
     There can be close questions in the application of the first amendment but whether or not the recognition of the Soverignty of God in public places and at public events is constitutional is not a close question.  This is a Christian nation, though its people are free to follow the promptings of conscience as they see fit without invading the rights of those who disagree with them.  By "Christian Nation" we do not mean that Christianity is established by any law as the official state-supported religion of the United States or that anyone is required to take part in Christian observances but, rather, that Christian principles motivated and animated the nation's founders and subsequent leaders with the full consent  and encouragement of the American people.  Our people and our government have a right to acknowledge that, and they should, gladly and with gratitute to the Great God who gave them life.

A Religion of Peace

      Terry Jones, a small town Florida pastor, threatened to burn copies of the Koran on the September anniversary of the World Trade Center attack.  Although Jones was well advised to refrain from carrying out that threat, all things considered, you would have thought he had threatened mass murder, given the avalanche of self-righteous indignation directed at him.  Some folks breathed a sigh of relief that those big bad conservatives hadn't taken over just yet.

      It was jihadist terrorists, promoting the "religion of peace", not Terry Jones, who decided to fly jets into buildings, blow a hole  in a ship, torch a night club full of people in Bali, bomb trains in Madrid and London, hotels in India and Pakistan and embassies in Africa, a passenger jet full of innocent people in Scotland, attempted to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge, attempted to set off a bomb at the Los Angeles airport, and on a jet flying the Atlantic, and a jet landing in Detroit, and a bomb in Times Square, decapitate  innocent people who displease them,  murder disagreeable authors, establish Shariah Law by force where it isn't wanted, stone women to death, require women to  have a male escort when leaving home and to forget about driving a car or having a career,  erect a triumphant in-your-face mosque at ground zero while denying Christians, Jews and Hindus the right to worship in Saudi Arabia and wherever else they can do so, and to run 'wahabi' schools to teach murder and mayhem against 'infidels'. 
     Goody-goodies and can't-we-all-get-along types sometimes assert that "you just don't understand the Moslem religion".  My response is "I don't have to, nor do I care to.  What they believe is their business.  What they do is everyone's business".  I don't even care whether Islam is really a religion at all, or a political movement dressed up as a religion to take advantage of a lot of misguided notions about religious freedom.  Nor should we be interested in the ridiculous argument that they are mad at the United States because we're such mean old imperialists and racists and all that crap.  If they were really motivated by anger at Americans why do they commit their atrocities all over the world?  If these guys aren't stopped at some point they will take over the world, largely by default flowing from the lethargy and indifference of the West.

     How wonderful that we have so far been protected from this monster Terry Jones and his fifty parishioners in rural Florida

Compromise

    
     Compromise is not a policy.  It's what you do if you must do it in order to get something you need or want very much.  You would rather get the whole loaf and you may hold out for it.  If you stand firm there may be no deal.  That happens.  But you don't say, before there are any negotiations underway or before anyone has said anything, "I'm here to compromise".
      Conservatives are accused of  taking a "hard line" on the deficit, taxes and other matters.  But how else can you take a position about anything if not at least in the beginning taking what the liberals and their media friends call a "hard line"?  Do you say "I'll pay you $10,000 for that painting but I don't really mean it and I'm willing to compromise"?  That's not compromise.  That is setting a floor on what you will be willing to pay.  In effect you are saying that you will pay at least $10,000 and you may go up from there.  Another way of looking at it is to say that you have made the prospective seller's first offer for him and you have thereby started  negotiations by negotiating with yourself.  The Tea Party people were elected to Congress in November of 2011 on their promise to the voters to reduce spending and the deficit if at all possible.  They believe that it cannot happen if the debt ceiling is continually raised.  So they promised the voters that they would take a position on those matters and in so doing they were doing what the voters wanted .  That's democracy.  The left, as expected, charged them with being unreasonable and, also as expected, the "moderates" in the GOP were ready to agree with the left as  they almost always are.  But what were conservatives supposed to do?  Should they  have said "we won't agree to raise the debt ceiling --- but we might"?  That is almost like saying nothing at all.  If you offer to buy someone's painting for $10,000 there is nothing to prevent him from making a counter-offer.  You may accept it, or you may not accept it.  Nothing prevents a prospective buyer from taking his own position and seeing where he can get with it.
     Frequently negotiations take an if-then form.  For example, the Democrats might say "if you will agree to raise the debt ceiling we will do such-and-such".  If that is to have any reasonable meaning the such-and-such part has to be specific and firm.  What the Democrats do in reality, to the applause of their media and moderate friends, is to say "if you will agree to  raise  the debt ceiling by X amount we will agree to talk about such-and-such.  No sale, or it should be no sale.

What Now in Afghanistan?

     The question 'why are we in Afghanistan' should really be 'why should we still be there with ground forces'?  Is there  even a good argument for continuing  that presence?  If not, we should get out in an orderly way which minimizes harm to the Afghans and ourselves.  If so, the question is 'to what extent' and with what force', a question with which I am not concerned here because I do not have the military expertise to discuss it and, anyway, it would require a detailed and extensive consideration of goals, timetables, etc. and this is an essay, not a five hundred page book. The practical question is how are our own national interests advanced by being there at all, if indeed they are?
    It was by any measure necessary to send the military to Afghanistan in the first instance.  The United States had been the victim of a murderous attack on September 11, 2001.  Two New York skyscrapers were bombed and destroyed, the Pentagon was damaged, a passenger jet full of people crashed in Pennsylvania and the White House and Capitol in Washington were threatened.  If there ever was an act of war this was it.  It eclipsed Pearl Harbor.  But with Pearl Harbor we knew what nation had attacked us, the Empire of Japan.  Here the enemy was an insidious extremist organization named al Quaeda, not a nation state.  However, as President Bush said, and almost everyone agreed at the time, if any nation was aiding, abetting and sheltering the guilty parties and refusing to turn them over to us that country would be held responsible for the attack and would be at war with the United States.  There was such a nation, Afghanistan, ruled by another terrorist group called the Taliban, which was closely allied with al Quaeda and was acting as its protector.  We had to react with decisive military force and we did.  Democrats and Republicans, Liberals and Conservatives all agreed on that.
     The Taliban was deposed, thrown out, and our forces occupied Kabul, the capital.  Immediately women were liberated after having been reduced by the Taliban to the status of slaves.  Other benign and civilized reforms were instituted.  There was one major problem, however.  The Talliban remained alive and well in the mountains of Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan, simply waiting to come back in after we had left and, for that matter, while we were still there.  Most of Afghanistan was still either a target for the Taliban or was ruled by a confusing conglomeration of warring tribes.  We set about trying to create a nation where there never had been one, a nation strong enough to fend off the Taliban and control warring tribes.  Were we successful in doing that?  Well, we're still trying, and it apprears that we have made some progress.  Should we stay until the process has been completed or until we conclude that it never will be?  Our original goal having been to bust up al Quaeda and kick it and the Taliban out, which was accomplished in large part, what is left which requires our continued presence at great cost and at a time of serious domestic economic difficulties in the United States?  We should face two salient facts:    (1)  The  fighting in Afghanistan cannot end with a peace treaty or a national surrender as did Word War ll.and (2)  It could therefore go on indefinitely, though possibly at a reduced level of combat, unless the enemy is crushed completely.
     So it comes to this.  Is there now a compelling reason to remain in Afghanistan?  It isn't nation-building.  The Afghans themselves must do that if that's what they want.  When we invaded Afhanistan we did assume some responsibility for its people, just as we once did for Germany and Japan.  We have helped the Afghans and we can perhaps continue to help them up to a point but we cannot stay there forever waiting for them to resolve their internal and external squabbles and difficulties.  Indefinite nation-building is not, I submit, a good reason for remaining in Afghanistan.  However, there is a good reason to remain there at some level of force.  It is that by remaining in a strategic location in the Middle East with air and ground fighting forces we are in a position to check, and go on checking, the progress of jihadist extremism.  If you want a WW ll analogy, the fact that we stayed in Europte gave us a barrier to Soviet expansion, just as our armed opposition to Hitler prevented him or his friends from bringing his insanity eventually to the United States.  Afghanistan is strategically located.  If it ever becomes necessary to defend Israel, which is hardly a remote possibility, we have a distinct advantage by having a presence there, and in Iraq.  Once we leave altogether, we're gone.  And remaining doesn't have to mean maintaining a presence at the current level.  It can be  reduced to suit the circumstances.
     I submit that it would be less than responsible for the United States to withdraw all military forces from Afghanistan and Iraq, including naval and air forces in that region of the world.  It would simply be an abdication of our position in the Middle East and we cannot afford that in a region of such conspicuous importance to the world and such great danger of drawing the world into ever greater dangers and complications.  I agree with Leon Panetta who recently said;  ". . . the mission [in Afghanistan] is to safeguard our country by insuring that the Taliban and al-Qaida never again find a safe haven in Afghanistan".  We need not confine this principle strictly to Afghanistan.  Any region as dangerous and sensitive as the Middle East requires constant attention for our own security.  If and when we become energy independant, which we are perfectly capable of doing if politics can be swept aside, the need for vigilance in the Middle East may be reduced.  But we are now faced with the world as it is.  The whole region --- Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia --- is simply far too dangerous not to have a strong military presence there.
    

Thought for the Day

When a tong banging on the wrong gong goes bong I sing a song along with Tommy Chong and Long Dong Fong from Hong Kong, who plays ping pong with King Kong.
                                                                                                                      Anonymous Poet