Stephen Kinzer writes in the Guardian.

Sirhan was not simply a “Jordanian citizen”, as he was called at the time. He was an embittered Palestinian who had been born in 1944 to a Christian family in Jerusalem. During the war that broke out when he was four years old, Jewish insurgents seized his house, and his family was forced to flee. He was nearly killed in an Irgun bombing at the Damascus Gate, and witnessed other violent attacks that deeply traumatised him.

As a young refugee, Sirhan attended a school where teachers exhorted students to struggle for Palestinian rights. Later his family moved to California, and he was there when Israel seized East Jerusalem and other Arab territories in the Six-Day War of 1967. He told at a friend that he believed Fatah was justified in using terror to oppose Israeli rule.

During the 1968 presidential campaign, Sirhan came to identify Robert Kennedy, who he had originally supported, as a friend of Israel. Three weeks before committing his crime, he watched a documentary about Kennedy’s involvement with Israel on CBS television. Soon afterward he heard a radio tape of Kennedy telling an audience at a Los Angeles synagogue that he would maintain “clear and compelling” support for Israel. After hearing it, a relative later testified, Sirhan ran from the room with “his hands on his ears, and almost weeping”.

Sirhan timed his attack on Kennedy to coincide with the first anniversary of the opening of the Six-Day War. At his trial, he sought several times to place his crime in the Palestinian context. “When you move a whole country, a whole people, bodily from their own homes, from their land, from their business,” he said, “that is completely wrong … . That burned the hell out of me.” Few Americans had any idea what he was talking about.

Kinzer concludes that Sirhan Sirhan’s murder of Bobby Kennedy was the first blowback against America from the Israeli occupation of Palestine. He places the cause of the murder directly at the feet of America’s and RFK’s support for Israel. But what he mentions, yet ignores in his conclusion, is the part that Palestian propaganda had to play in it.

Review this.

When news of Sirhan’s background was flashed back to the Arab world after he killed Kennedy, many people there instinctively understood what had happened. They recognised the crime as a horrific expression of the violent frustration that young Palestinians were beginning to feel. [...]

and this.

As a young refugee, Sirhan attended a school where teachers exhorted students to struggle for Palestinian rights.

Though Kinzer doesn’t say it, the English word “struggle” is often substituted for the Arabic word “jihad.” Even though a Sirhan Sirhan was raised a Maronite christian definitely taught to wage jihad Palestinians have been teaching their children to hate and desire to kill Jews for 50 years now. Is it any wonder that the first generation of Palestinians in exile should have been infected by the Judenhass? They were affected by the war, and all wars are overwhelming, shattering, horrible experiences. Civilians caught up in war are understandably traumatized by them and their resulting prejudices and hatreds are understandable. But the hatred of Palestinians for Jews and Americans is something else. It is a sore spot intentionally rubbed raw and self-infected with poison. Because of that, it cannot be blamed on anyone other than the Palestinians themselves.

Related: We shouted out, who killed the Kennedys

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Technorati Tags: Jews, Jihad, Crime and Punishment, Sirhan Sirhan, Kennedy

Habiba Kouider used to be a Muslim. Then she converted to Christianity and was baptized. Recently she was pulled off a bus by police who interrogated her in public, rifled through her purse, examining her bibles and other literature, and even performed a body search on her, all while firing hostile questions at her.

After examining the contents of the Christian woman’s handbag, police officers body-searched her and then proceeded to interrogate her.

“Why did you convert to Christianity, why did you forsake Islam?” the officers asked, according to comments by Mustapha Krim, published on the website collectifalgerie.free.fr.

Kouider has been charged with “practicing a non-Muslim religion” and is facing a three-year prison sentence requested by prosecutors.

Meanwhile, six Christians who had been worshiping in a private house in Tiaret, Algeria were arrested by non-uniformed secret police after they completed a worship service. They now face two years in prison for worshiping in a house and have released an open letter for help to the Christians of the world.

My dear brothers in faith all over the world, here is the tale of humiliation, injustice and persecution that your brothers in Algeria are subjected to daily, by society but in particular by the security services and the state. The latest event took place on May 9th, 2008 after leaving the Friday worship service, which we held in secret, in fear, in a brother’s house in Tiaret. We were taken by surprise when we were arrested openly in the street by security forces in plain clothes. These persons took us one by one, just like criminals, but our only crime was our faith in Jesus Christ, which has become a dangerous crime in Algeria.

My brothers, I will not describe the humiliation that we had to endure at the hands of these agents, as they were taking us to the central police station. When we had arrived they searched us one by one while insulting us, calling us renegades: those who have denied their faith in order to follow that of the west. They said we were accomplices and Isreali spies, and that we deserve to have our throats cut without any pity: a violent and inhuman aggression. Is it normal to arrest someone just because of his faith, in a country which pretends to be democratic and which says it respects human rights and personal freedom? On top of all that, we were kept there by the agents all night on Friday, in a prison cell in deplorable and undescribable conditions, without allowing us to phone our families or those dear to us. The next day we were taken before the Prosecutor of the Republic at the court in Tiaret, to ask us humiliating and embarassing questions, such as : « Why have you forsaken your ancestors’ religion? For money? » and « at what price have you been bought? » Finally we were free to go, with the order to appear in court on May 27th 2008 on an absurd charge : « Distribution of documents and books in order to destabilise the faith of muslims ». Hereunder is a copy of the order to be present at the trial. Brothers, I have written this so that you could be informed of the situation. We need your support in these difficult times, by all possible means (written, protestations…).

The 2006 Law in Algeria concerning Christianity and other non-Muslim religion is horrible. If you would like to complain, and you really should, the Algerian Embassy in Washington DC can be reached at the following addresses (try both).

We do not regret things we have done so much as we regret things we have not done. Do not give yourself a reason to regret your silence about the persecuted Christians in Algeria. Speak up, even if just with an email.

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Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Rosemary’s Thoughts, Right Truth, Adam’s Blog, Cao’s Blog, The Amboy Times, Democrat=Socialist, Conservative Cat, Pet’s Garden Blog, third world county, Faultline USA, The World According to Carl, The Pink Flamingo, Dumb Ox Daily News, , and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Technorati Tags: Freedom of Religion, Algeria, Christianity, Ex-Muslim, Sharia, Tyranny

See-Dubya has a terrific video comparison between John Kerry and Barack Obama with a great Shirley Bassey sound-track behind it. Not as dynamite as the Goldfinger theme, but better than any Bond theme since Diamonds are Forever. The combo is reeeeeal niiiice. Two thrills up Chris Matthews’ leg. About a zillion Obama posters. Arugula. One unrepentant terrorist stomping on a US flag. One harridan actually proud of her country for the first time ever. Another harridan saying that Obama has no experience. A flip. A flip flop. A flopping flip. A flop. Rappers, Obama Girls, winter soldier testimony, and Robot Chicken uber-dork Seth Green giving a black power salute. Wolf Pangloss says, “check it out!”

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Technorati Tags: Obama, Video, Democrats

Faultline USA has an important article updating the story of what’s going on at Obama’s church, the Black Liberation Theology espousing Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. He found a video of a sermon that Otis P. Moss III, the new preacher at TUCC, and his father, Otis P. Moss, Jr., gave together.

As luck would have it, I found a very enlightening, and very troubling, sermon given in tandem by Dr. Otis Moss Jr. and Rev. Otis Moss, III. Can Moses Generation Meet the Joshua Generation? Now you would have to go to the BLT African American Pulpit to find this hour long sermon. It isn’t on YouTube. But like anything of great value, a little time well invested is worth its weight in gold!

Gold? Yes, the kind of gold we need to expose the depths of BLT Heresy, and its Revolutionary form of anti-Americanism.

The sermon starts out with Biblical readings and then . . .

Rev. Otis Moss Jr. reads to his son, Rev. Otis Moss III, a letter written by Afro-centric Moses to Joshua in the 21^st Century. Afro-centric Moses says that “my Afro-centric heritage has served me well . . .I survived genocide because my mother and my father practiced civil disobedience . . .in spite of the Euro-centric distortions of my African-ness . . .”

The entire gist of the sermon is the creation of a new mythos based on the connection of Africans to Moses and the Israelites who were “kept under of the heavy hand of genocide and slavery 400+ years of bondage.”

The constant refrain throughout the sermon is to never forget the past, and the obvious implication is to never forget that Africans are the oppressed – and, most of all, to never forget who the oppressors are!

If you mix the Exodus with a pagan Igbo legend and let the pagan legend supply the meaning, you will not end up with the Christian message. That Moss sermon is thoroughly pagan. How can it be preached at a Christian church, and the church not be realized to be heretical?

When the old preacher said Kulay-Ba (cooley ba? kuleba? koo-lay-ba?) in the ear of the flying Africans the word entered into them and could not be taken out. That is a sorcerous, pagan word. The sermon is about permanently changing the Africans into pagans. It is not about Christianity, but something else that must not be confused with Jesus’ message. It is about “liberation” in the form of permanent revolution, by means of a magic word passed down from pagan times. In other words, it carries a black-nationalist Marxist message that appeals to a revived paganism and casts white people as the reviled other.

The Black Liberation Theologists also forget, in their emphasis on the Egyptians as the eternal oppressors of the Israelites, that Jesus fled the Romans to take refuge in Egypt. The world changes. The face of the oppressors changes. The place of refuge changes. Just as it is with the dark-skinned American descendants of slaves. Their oppressors are not the same people who used to oppress them, but an oppressive belief system known as bureaucratic big government that holds them as slaves on the new plantations known as “the projects.”

In these new plantations they lack privacy and safety. There is no effective law. They are left to the depredations of predatory drug dealers and other criminals. There is no community around them as employers cannot stay in business in the shadow of a project, as the coddled criminals continually test and rob every business nearby. The Law was scrubbed and racist remnants were removed during the 1960s and 70s. But the plantations have been denied the protection of the Law because of understandable black fears of the formerly racist legal system. These fears are understandable but they are wrong. When the Law fails to pursue criminals and punish them, or treats criminals as children who deserve their hand slapped for major crimes, then criminals take heart in the chaos and they grow more powerful and more dangerous. The prevalence of welfare in the new plantations is another sign of slavery. Rather than paying a poverty wage for hard work as slavery did, welfare pays a poverty wage for not working, or working off the books, and rewards the breakup of families. Neither slavery nor welfare allows people to rise above it, unless they reject it utterly. And rejection of the new plantations is also needed, not only by those who live within them, but by everyone who really cares about allowing people to raise themselves up out of financial, moral, and mental poverty.

Based on my comment at Faultline USA.

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Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Rosemary’s Thoughts, 123beta, Right Truth, The Amboy Times, Cao’s Blog, Democrat=Socialist, Adeline and Hazel, Faultline USA, third world county, McCain Blogs, The World According to Carl, Blue Star Chronicles, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Gulf Coast Hurricane Tracker, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Technorati Tags: Obama, Christianity, Heresy, Trinity, Otis P. Moss III, Religion

Godspeed to a very funny man, here in an old fashioned but still funny musical comedy sketch with Tim Conway from the Carol Burnett Show.

Harvey, may you find the shortest trip possible to Heaven’s all-star team of sketch comedy.

Also see Ace for the riotously funny Dentist sketch.

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Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Rosemary’s Thoughts, third world county, McCain Blogs, 123beta, Right Truth, The World According to Carl, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Cao’s Blog, The Amboy Times, Gulf Coast Hurricane Tracker, Democrat=Socialist, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Technorati Tags: pop culture, RIP, Harvey Korman

Suspicions confounded! The news about Clay Aiken impregnating the 50-year-old sister of music producer David Foster (with the sexually ambiguous name of Jaymes) is intriguing not because of the happy announcement, but because of what everybody suspects about Aiken. In any case, I wish Aiken and Foster and their turkey baster all the best luck and blessings in the world. Even if he doesn’t intend to act as a father now, in time, I think Aiken will learn to relish the role.

Open Trackbacks!

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Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Rosemary’s Thoughts, third world county, McCain Blogs, 123beta, Right Truth, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Leaning Straight Up, Cao’s Blog, The Amboy Times, Gulf Coast Hurricane Tracker, Democrat=Socialist, Conservative Cat, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

 tag: Open Trackbacks, Open Post, Clay Aiken, Artificial Insemination

Taylor Mali at a Def Poetry Jam talking about talking, about talking like you mean it, like you know what you’re talking about, like you are not making a joke or asking a question.

Money quote:

“As society just becomes so filled with these conflicting feelings of ngggggh, that we’ve just gotten to the point where we’re the most aggressively inarticulate generation to come along, since, you know, a long time ago.”

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Trackposted to Rosemary’s Thoughts, Alabama Improper, Online Gym, Faultline USA, third world county, The World According to Carl, DragonLady’s World, The Pink Flamingo, Big Dog’s Weblog, Cao’s Blog, Chucjk’s Place, Democrat=Socialist, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Technorati Tags: Poetry, Video, Taylor Mali

With Fitna Remade, Reza Moradi recuts Geert Wilder’s movie Fitna to speak for the Muslims who are victimized by the Takfirism, Sharia and Jihad of political Islam.

What follows is an edited version of Fitna with my commentary about the realities of Islam and political Islam. It is an attempt to disgrace political Islam and its apologists and side with the masses of people resisting it in the Middle East.

Moradi indulges in some moral relativism, comparing Muslim Terrorism to US Military “Terrorism.” She favors the banning of religion from society at large (not sure how this could work without an omnipotent dictator in charge). And she also favors increased asylum in western countries of Muslims claiming persecution. But the majority of her argument is still interesting and worth watching.

At FaithFreedom.org, Amitabh Tripathi explores the message sent by a new Jihadist group called Indian Mujahidin claiming responsibility for the bombings against Jaipur, and describes why India has been unable to mount an effective counter to its own Jihadist threats.

When Mujahideeens in Afghanistan were fighting against Soviet Union it was very much evident that after defeat of Soviet Union in Afghanistan they are not going to stop. America very tactfully used mujahideens against their arch rival of cold war but experts of Islamism in America never took these mujaheedeens as their ally and some of them had apprehensions that these Islamist forces in near future could target America as well. It is the reason why America was able to take on these Islamists just after 9/11. On Contrary we were unprepared to this surge of Islamist movement.

After 1991 when Soviet Union was defeated in Afghanistan and those Mujahideens of Pakistan took the cause to liberate J&K from India. It was prime time to nip in the bud and crush the Islamist aspirations in India but at that stage our political system and intelligentsia tried to divert the attention of people from the debate of Islamist aspiration and Islamist terrorism in J&K was defined as an insurgency and it was said that this is done by some misguided youths due to unemployment. But these misguided unemployed youths were very much guided with religious appeal that ethnic cleansing took place in valley and all Hindus were forced to evacuate their homeland to become refugees in their own country. This was the first chance when we were in position to curb the Islamic terrorism and stop it before spreading its tentacles in other parts of our nation. But we missed the bus.

Amil Imani, Europe Shall Bleed, Once Again

Me and my brother against my cousin; me, my brother, and my cousin against the other. This is an old Muslim saying and Muslims live by this motto. To be sure the people of the-religion of peace- find the world full of “other,” to oppress and kill, both within as well as without the Islamic Ummeh.

Civilized peoples’ idea of the “other” is the exact opposite of that of Muslims. All over Europe, for one, people have been singing the praises of multiculturalism; the idea that everybody should bend over backwards to accommodate the different in society. [...]

To Muslims, anyone who doesn’t toe the line of Islam, as each sect defines it, is the “other” and fair game as kafir (blasphemous; unbeliever in Allah).

Douglas Farah, Good News on the Terror Funding Libel Front

The cases seem to indicate that careful, fair and accurate reporting on terrorism financing can withstand legal challenge even in Europe, where plaintiffs are heavily advantaged in libel proceedings. The catch: You have to be willing and financially able to defend yourself. To all our benefit, the WSJ had the will.

Gilbert T. Sewall, Islam in the Classroom: What the Textbooks Tell Us

Flexibility of taste and, on matters of content, an element of nihilism are essentials for textbook publishing executives and editors. Top editors - who in the case of social studies publishing are indistinguishable from marketing executives - make a business of appeasing pressure groups. Islamic activists, some with no academic credentials or background, are listed as academic reviewers in major textbooks from several companies and imprints. The Council on Islamic Education and other Islamic education organizations are secretive and easily agitated. Their links and consulting activities with publishers raise unanswered questions and merit further scrutiny.

Ibn Kammuna, Qur’anic Shari’a Law

In this article I talk about some aspects of Shari’a law as founded in the Qur’an. A Muslim, regardless of school of thought will have to accept such laws. After all, they are founded in the Qur’an, Allah’s final word. After introducing the crime, I provide the Qur’anic evidence followed by some critical analysis that sheds light on possible alternatives. I end the article with a substantive conclusion.

Basharee Murtadd, Fight Islam because it’s Intolerant, Not because it’s False

Religion is like a placebo. Those who believe in it can do a lot of good for themselves and mankind. Who are we to say that anything that’s false is bad for us? Is Santa Claus bad for our children?

The problem with Islam is not in its inaccuracies, but rather in its intolerance. Belief is a personal choice made by an individual. I have no problem with people believing in Jesus, Buddha, or Mother Goose for that matter. But when a ‘religion’ preaches hatred and intolerance for all those who differ from its adherents, then this ‘religion’ should be declared as a banned political ideology no different from Nazism.

Jahanshah Rashidian, Minorities in Allah’s Country

The Islamic Republic of Iran places the Shiite sect of Islam at the heart of the state apparatus. The Islamisation of all life, based on Khomeini’s own interpretation of Islam, is the central policy of the Islamic ruling elite.

Religious minorities, which include the Sunnite sect of Islam, Christian, Jews, Zoroastrians and Baha’is compromised about 10 % of the population after the Iranian revolution, most of them Sunnite Muslims who also suffer from discrimination as national minorities. In addition, increasing numbers of Shiites, especially after the inception of the IRI, are non-believers.

Laina Farhat-Holzman, Western Media Stooges of Islamist Propaganda: The Case of al-Dura

Our founding fathers regarded a press free from government interference as an essential institution for the protection of democracy. The press was to inform voters through a diversity of viewpoints and to prevent the abuse of power that thrives in the absence of scrutiny.

In the real world, however, media often serves as a mouthpiece of the government in power or a distraction of scandal and gossip as we often find in the American and European popular tabloids.

In some dictatorships there is only one view permitted, the dictator’s and foreign journalists are not permitted. In Burma and North Korea, we have seen in the necessity to clandestinely cover Burma’s flood-storm disaster or North Korea’s recurring starvation.

But in sophisticated dictatorships (Soviet Union and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq), foreign journalists were permitted but were under constraint. Uncooperative journalists were expelled. Journalists couldn’t cover the country at all if they were expelled, so they had to wait until the end of their tour of duty to tell the truth.

One area of the world that needs to be covered honestly is the Arab Middle East - an area that plays a major role in American foreign policy. Israel has a rambunctiously free press, but the Arab world, particularly the Palestinian Territories and Gaza, is a different case. Local journalists foolish enough to expose graft or corruption will not live long. Foreign journalists must be pro-Palestinian or they are expelled. And some foreign journalists let themselves be used for political propaganda.

Kanchan Gupta, Islam’s enemy within

A lie repeated again and again, as Paul Joseph Goebbels proved through word and deed, tends to be believed by the masses. Islamofascists, both at home and abroad, who peddle the myth that ‘Islam is the solution’ and thus see nothing wrong with the ghastly crimes committed in the name of Islam, would naturally take to Goebbelsian propaganda tactics like a duck takes to water. Fiction propagated slyly at conferences and seminars, mentioned between the lines in newspaper articles, and slipped into Friday sermons by mullahs after the jumma namaaz, acquires a certain legitimacy and is soon perceived as fact.

We have seen this happen in India on more than one occasion. When Hindus were forced to flee their ancestral homes in the Kashmir Valley by killer squads of Islamists who indulged in rapacious depredations and reveled in the slaughter of innocent men, women and children, an insidious campaign was launched, pinning the blame on Mr Jagmohan, then Governor of Jammu & Kashmir: He was accused of telling the Hindus to flee the Valley. Strangely, this fiction was believed by the secular intelligentsia which, in any event, is desperate to clutch at straws to absolve Islamic fanatics of their crimes and eager to paint Islamist marauders in the most glowing of colours.

Similar tactics were used in the wake of commuter train bombing in Mumbai, which killed 187 people. It was blatantly suggested by our homegrown Islamists that the massacre was the handiwork of either “Government agencies” or “Hindu organisations.”

The Apostate, Muslims and my intellectual loneliness

I haven’t “engaged” with Muslims about Islam — online or off — for quite a while now. I simply have nothing to say to them about their persistent belief that fairy-tales are real. What can you say? You blink and nod and move on. [...]

Ugh — I feel dirty, tainted. Muslim men do that to me — unfailingly condescending and deeply sexist Muslim men. Unfortunately, I haven’t run into a single specimen that doesn’t conform. Should remember just always to steer clear.

Tahir’s Journey, from Muslims for Christ

Soon after arriving in the United States from Palestine 14 years ago, I married a nice Christian girl. She tried to become a Muslim to please me, but the more she did, the more I turned away from her. We had a child together, but the marriage didn’t last because it is hard to love when your heart is filled with hate. Hate is what I was taught growing up in Palestine; hate towards the Jews, the Christians and hate against the world. As a Palestinian, you are taught from day number 1 that the whole world is responsible for our misfortune especially Jews and Christians.

Ahmed Paul, Create in me a clean heart, O God

My name is Ahmed; I was the first born in 1969 in Alexandria Egypt to a religious poor family. My father is a very Devout Muslim who keeps all the pillars of Islam and then some, being raised in such a family made it a very important requirement to be as religious as my father who is also an open minded Man, loved by everyone.

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Trackposted to Rosemary’s Thoughts, Alabama Improper, Online Gym, Faultline USA, third world county, The World According to Carl, DragonLady’s World, The Pink Flamingo, Big Dog’s Weblog, Cao’s Blog, Chucjk’s Place, Democrat=Socialist, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Technorati Tags: Ex-Muslim, Roundup

April 2, 2008

Thank you. I am very happy to be here. Annapolis holds a special place in my life, and in the years that have passed since my father drove me to the gates of the Naval Academy to begin my plebe year, memories of my experiences here are often bathed in the welcome haze of nostalgia for the time when I was brave and true and better looking than I am at present. But witnesses to my behavior here, a few of whom are present today, as well as a nagging conscience, have a tendency to interrupt my reverie for a misspent youth, and urge a more honest appraisal of my record and character here. In truth, my four years at the Naval Academy were not notable for exemplary virtue or academic achievement but, rather, for the impressive catalogue of demerits I managed to accumulate. By my reckoning, at the end of my second class year, I had marched enough extra duty to take me to Baltimore and back seventeen times — which, if not a record, certainly ranks somewhere very near the top.

Never in my wildest flights of youthful fancy did I imagine I would one day be honored to give the commencement address at the Academy as I was some years ago. And, certainly, no matter how inflated was my self-regard as a midshipman, it could never have admitted the prospect that I would someday return to the banks of the Severn as a candidate for President of the United States. My old company officer, who for four years devoted himself to tracking my nocturnal sojourns outside the walls of the Academy and my other petty acts of insubordination, would have certainly shared my skepticism. But in the intervening years and experiences, I have learned what a young man seldom appreciates: that life is rich with irony and unexpected twists of fate, and is all the more fascinating for them. And I learned this, too: that my accomplishments are more a testament to my country, the land of opportunity, than they are to me. In America, everything is possible.

I had a difficult time my plebe year adjusting to the discipline imposed on me, which included, of course, deference to officers and instructors, but to other midshipmen, whose only accomplishment entitling them to my obedience, I thought at the time, was to have been born a year or more before me. I was something of a discipline problem to begin with. The problem being, I didn’t like discipline. And that childish impulse that seemed then so important to my self-respect; to protecting the individualism I had been at pains to assert throughout my itinerant childhood, encouraged my irreverence to some of the customs of this place.

It’s funny, now, how less self-assured I feel later in life than I did when I lived in the perpetual springtime of youth. Some of my critics allege that age hasn’t entirely cost me my earlier conceits. All I can say to them is they should have known me then. But as the great poet, Yeats, wrote, “All that’s beautiful drifts away, like the waters.” I’ve lost some of the attributes that were the object of a young man’s vanity. But there have been compensations, which I have come to hold dear.

If I had ignored some of the less important conventions of the Academy, I was careful not to defame its more compelling traditions: the veneration of courage and resilience; the honor code that simply assumed your fidelity to its principles; the homage paid to Americans who had sacrificed greatly for our country; the expectation that you, too, would prove worthy of your country’s trust.

Appearances to the contrary, it was never my intention to mock a revered culture that expected better of me. Like any other midshipman, I wanted to prove my mettle to my contemporaries and to the institution that figured so prominently in my family history. My idiosyncratic methods amounted to little more than the continued expressions of the truculence I had used at other schools to fend off what I had wrongly identified as attacks on my dignity.

The Naval Academy was not interested in degrading my dignity. On the contrary, it had a more expansive conception of human dignity than I possessed when I arrived at its gates. The most important lesson I learned here was that to sustain my self-respect for a lifetime it would be necessary for me to have the honor of serving something greater than my self-interest.

When I left the Academy, I was not even aware I had learned that lesson. In a later crisis, I would suffer a genuine attack on my dignity, an attack, unlike the affronts I had exaggerated as a boy, that left me desperate and uncertain. It was then I would recall, awakened by the example of men who shared my circumstances, the lesson that the Academy in its venerable and enduring way had labored to impress upon me. It changed my life forever. I had found my cause: citizenship in the greatest nation on earth.

Like most people, when I reflect back on the adventures and joys of youth, I feel a longing for what is lost and cannot be restored. But though such happy pursuits prove ephemeral, something better can endure, and endure until our last moment on earth. And that is the honor you earn and the love you give when you sacrifice with others for a cause greater than yourself.

Our civilization’s progress is accelerated by the information-technology revolution that ranks with the industrial revolution as a great pivot point in history. All around the world, the dynamics of the new economy: the internet, the communications revolution and globalization are transforming the way we work and create value; the way we govern ourselves — or others presume to govern us; the way we live.

But even as we stand today, at the threshold of an age in which the genius of America will, I am confident, again be proven — the genius that historian Frederick Turner called “that restless, nervous energy; that dominant individualism … that buoyancy and exuberance which comes with freedom” — many Americans are indifferent to or cynical about the virtues that our country claims. In part, it is attributable to the dislocations economic change causes; to the experience of Americans who have, through no fault of their own, been left behind as others profit as they never have before. In part, it is in reaction to government’s mistakes and incompetence, and to the selfishness of some public figures who seek to shine the luster of their public reputations at the expense of the public good. But for others, cynicism about our country, government, social and religious institutions seems not a reaction to occasions when they have been let down by these institutions, but because the ease which wealth and opportunity have given their lives led them to the mistaken conclusion that America, and the liberties its system of government is intended to protect, just aren’t important to the quality of their lives.

I’m a conservative, and I believe it is a very healthy thing for Americans to be skeptical about the purposes and practices of public officials. We shouldn’t expect too much from government — nor should it expect too much from us. Self-reliance — not foisting our responsibilities off on others — is the ethic that made America great.

But when healthy skepticism sours into corrosive cynicism our expectations of our government become reduced to the delivery of services. And to some people the expectations of liberty are reduced to the right to choose among competing brands of designer coffee.

What is lost is, in a word, citizenship. For too many Americans, the idea of good citizenship does not extend beyond walking into a voting booth every two or four years and pulling a lever. And too few Americans demand of themselves even that first obligation of self-government.

But citizenship properly understood is what Ronald Reagan was talking about when he said that Americans “are a nation that has a government — not the other way around.” Citizenship is not just the imposition of the mundane duties of democracy. Nor is it the unqualified entitlement to the protections and services of the state.

Citizenship thrives in the communal spaces where government is absent. Anywhere Americans come together to govern their lives and their communities — in families, churches, synagogues, museums, symphonies, the Little League, the Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts, the Salvation Army or the VFW — they are exercising their citizenship.

Citizenship is defined by countless acts of love, kindness and courage that have no witness or heraldry and are especially commendable because they are unrecorded.

Although it exists apart from government, citizenship is the habits and institutions that preserve democracy. It is the ways, small and large, we come together to govern ourselves. Citizenship is the responsible exercise of freedom, and is indispensable to the proper functioning of a democracy.

The English writer G.K. Chesterton once wrote that America is a “nation with the soul of a church.” What he meant is that America is not a race or a people but an idea — a place where the only requirement for membership is a belief in the principles of liberty, opportunity and equality under the law on which this nation was founded.

Citizenship is our acceptance of — and our protection of — these principles. It is the duties, the loyalties, the inspirations and the habits of mind that bind us together as Americans.

We are the heirs and caretakers of freedom; a blessing preserved with the blood of heroes down through the ages. One cannot go to Arlington Cemetery and see name upon name, grave upon grave, row upon row, without being deeply moved by the sacrifice made by those young men and women.

And those of us who live in this time, who are the beneficiaries of their sacrifice, dare not forget what they did and why they did it, lest we lose our own love of liberty.

Love of country, my friends, is another way of saying love of your fellow countrymen — a truth I learned a long time ago in a country very different from ours.

That is the good cause that summons every American to service. If you find faults with our country, make it a better one. If you are disappointed with the mistakes of government, join its ranks and work to correct them. I hope more Americans would consider enlisting in our Armed Forces. I hope more would consider running for public office or working in federal, state and local governments. But there are many public causes where your service can make our country a stronger, better one than we inherited. Wherever there is a hungry child, a great cause exists. Where there is an illiterate adult, a great cause exists. Wherever there are people who are denied the basic rights of Man, a great cause exists. Wherever there is suffering, a great cause exists.

The good citizen and wise person pursues happiness that is greater than comfort, more sublime than pleasure. The cynical and indifferent know not what they miss. For their mistake is an impediment not only to our progress as a civilization but to their happiness as individuals.

As blessed as we are, no nation complacent in its greatness can long sustain it. We, too, must prove, as those who came before us proved, that a people free to act in their own interests, will perceive those interests in an enlightened way, will live as one nation, in a kinship of ideals, and make of our power and wealth a civilization for the ages, a civilization in which all people share in the promise and responsibilities of freedom.

Should we claim our rights and leave to others the duty to the ideals that protect them, whatever we gain for ourselves will be of little lasting value. It will build no monuments to virtue, claim no honored place in the memory of posterity, offer no worthy summons to the world. Success, wealth and celebrity gained and kept for private interest is a small thing. It makes us comfortable, eases the material hardships our children will bear, purchases a fleeting regard for our lives, yet not the self-respect that, in the end, matters most. But sacrifice for a cause greater than yourself, and you invest your life with the eminence of that cause, your self-respect assured.

All lives are a struggle against selfishness. All my life I’ve stood a little apart from institutions that I had willingly joined. It just felt natural to me. But if my life had shared no common purpose, it would not have amounted to much more than eccentric. There is no honor or happiness in just being strong enough to be left alone. As one of my potential opponents often observes, I’ve spent fifty years in the service of this country and its ideals. I have made many mistakes, and I have my share of regrets. But I’ve never lived a day, in good times or bad, that I wasn’t grateful for the privilege. That’s the benefit of service to a country that is an idea and a cause, a righteous idea and cause. America and her ideals helped spare me the worst consequences of the deficiencies in my character. And I cannot forget it.

When I was a young man, I thought glory was the highest attainment, and all glory was self-glory. My parents had tried to teach me otherwise, as did the Naval Academy. But I didn’t understand the lesson until later in life, when I confronted challenges I never expected to face.

In that confrontation, I discovered that I was dependent on others to a greater extent than I had ever realized, but neither they nor the cause we served made any claims on my identity. On the contrary, they gave me a larger sense of myself than I had ever had before. And I am a better man for it. I discovered that nothing in life is more liberating than to fight for a cause that encompasses you but is not defined by your existence alone. And that has made all the difference, my friends, all the differences in the world. Thank you.

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Trackposted to Pet’s Garden Blog, The Virtuous Republic, Rosemary’s Thoughts, Faultline USA, Alabama Improper, third world county, Online Gym, The World According to Carl, DragonLady’s World, Oblogatory Anecdotes, The Pink Flamingo, Cao’s Blog, Big Dog’s Weblog, Democrat=Socialist, Conservative Cat, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Technorati Tags: United States, McCain, Military, Memorial Day

I first posted this a year ago, on Memorial Day. I think it still stands.

I had to work today, on Memorial Day. The Titanium mines of Titan are a cruel taskmaster indeed. And yet I took a moment to remember those who have given all their tomorrows for my tomorrows and the tomorrows of those who are close to me. Thank you brave men and women. Thank you for caring enough to risk it all. I don’t deserve your deaths, but then none of us do. We don’t believe in human sacrifice, not our country, but in men doing what is necessary and putting themselves at risk in order to do what must be done against those who do believe in human sacrifice, the burning bull of Moloch, the suicide bombers and headchoppers and torture-murderers of the global jihad death-cult.

Read some of the stories of those who have earned the Medal of Honor, both those who died and those who lived. Here is one who has an important lesson for those who feel a conflict between their desire for peace and the realization that war has been declared against our country, and that like it or not our choice is not whether to be at war but whether to fight back against those who would slaughter us.

Sgt. Alvin Cullium York, US Army

Alvin York did not want to go to war. He freely admits that and tells why. He says, “There were two reasons why I didn’t want to go to war. My own experience told me it wasn’t right, and the Bible was against it too…..but Uncle Sam said he wanted me, and I had been brought up to believe in my country.”

If there is anything one can say about Alvin York without fear of contradiction, it is that he was patriotic. He loved his country, and what is more, he came from a long line of patriots who had fought for their country all the way from King’s Mountain to New Orleans, Chapultepec and Shiloh. In addition to York’s direct family ancestors who had fought for their country since the Revolution, he also felt a close kinship with such frontier greats as Andrew Jackson, Davy Crockett and Sam Houston. The influence of all these patriotic ancestors, both by blood and by culture, weighed heavily on the mind of Alvin York as the day of his induction into the army moved closer and even after he got to Camp Gordon. He describes his dilemma in these words:

“So you see my religion and my experience…told me not to go to war, and the memory of my ancestors…told me to get my gun and go fight. I didn’t know what to do. I’m telling you there was a war going on inside me, and I didn’t know which side to lean to. I was a heap bothered. It is a most awful thing when the wishes of your God and your country…get mixed up and go against each other. One moment I would make up my mind to follow God, and the next I would hesitate and almost make up my mind to follow Uncle Sam. Then I wouldn’t know which to follow or what to do. I wanted to follow both but I couldn’t. They were opposite. I wanted to be a good Christian and a good American too.”

Up to this point in the sheltered life of the isolated valley in which Alvin York had lived, he had never come face to face with and had to choose between two great principles or courses of action. He had always just assumed that being a good Christian and being a good, patriotic American were one and the same thing. At least they were so closely connected that a man dedicated to one would automatically be dedicated to the other. Now he was learning it was not so in the light of what he had always been taught about Christianity and about patriotism. The complexities of theology and its application to living in a world far more complex than he had imagined, drove him to cry out, “I am a soul in doubt.”

The records in the War Department in Washington will always make it appear that Alvin York was a conscientious objector. He was not. He was a “soul in doubt” as he said. He was torn between what he thought was his duty to his country and his God. When this conflict was resolved in his mind, he never again voiced objection to fighting, killing if necessary, for his country. The petitions filed asking exemption from military duty were initiated by Pastor Pile and his mother. “My little old mother and Pastor Pile wanted me to get out,” he wrote in his diary.

“Pastor Pile put in a plea to the government that it was against the religion of our church to fight, and that he wanted to get me out on these grounds. And he sent his papers to the War Department, and they filled them out and sent them to me at the camp and asked me to sign them.

“They told me all I had to do was to sign them. And I refused to sign them, as I couldn’t see it the way Pastor Pile did. My mother, too, put in a plea to get me out as her sole support. My father was dead and I was keeping my mother and brothers and sisters. And the papers were fixed up and sent to Camp Gordon and I was asked to sign them. I knew I had plenty of brothers back there who could look after my mother, that I was not the sole support, and I didn’t feel I ought to do it. And so I never asked for exemption on any grounds at all. I never was a conscientious objector. I am not today. I didn’t want to go and fight and kill. But I had to answer the call of my country and I did. I believed it was right. I have got no hatred toward the Germans and I never had.”

Here we have a direct statement from Alvin York denying categorically that he ever was a conscientious objector. But we have another direct quotation from another book stating that “….so long as the records remain I will be officially known as a conscientious objector. I was. I joined the church. I had taken its creed, and I had taken it without what you might call reservations. I was not a Sunday Christian. I believed in the Bible, and I tried in my own way to live up to it.”

Here we have two direct statements which appear to be flatly contradictory: “I never was a conscientious objector,” and “So long as the records remain I will be officially known as a conscientious objector. I was.”

How do we reconcile these statements? Or can we reconcile them? I think we can.

Those who knew Alvin York personally knew how confused he was at that time. In that confused state of mind he interpreted the term “conscientious objector” in two different ways, as it was used by the War Department and as he saw it in the light of his church creed and the Bible. By the former interpretation he was not a conscientious objector; by the latter he was. His lack of education made it impossible for him to comprehend entirely the two horns of the dilemma upon which he was impaled. In his own writing he gives us a basis for this explanation: “Only the boy who is uneducated can understand what an awful thing ignorance is . . . . I know what I want to say, but I don’t always know just how to put it down on paper. I just don’t know how to get it out of me and put it in words.”

The conflict raged on in his mind. He was still the “soul in doubt knowing that he really wanted to follow in the footsteps of his ancestors and fight for his country, but finding no way to reconcile war and killing with his own conscience and the creed of his church.

What did this conscientious objector do to earn himself the Medal of Honor?

“The part which Corporal York individually played in the attack (the capture of the Decauville Railroad) is difficult to estimate. Practically unassisted he captured 132 Germans (three of whom were officers), took about thirty-five machine guns, and killed no less than twenty-five of the enemy, later found by others on the scene of York’s extraordinary exploit. The story has been carefully checked in every possible detail from headquarters of this division and is entirely substantiated. Although York’s statement tends to underestimate the desperate odds which he overcame, it has been decided to forward to higher authorities the account given in his own name. The success of this assault had a far-reaching effect in relieving the enemy pressure against American forces in the heart of the Argonne Forest.”

The official history of the 82nd Division states that York’s exploit in the Argonne Forest “will always be retold in the military tradition of our country. It is entitled to a place among the famous deeds in arms in legendary or modern warfare.” Following this exploit which made him famous, York stayed on in the front lines in the Argonne from October 8 until November 1. It was during this time that he had his closest call. “The nearest I came to getting killed in France,” he wrote, “was in an apple orchard in Sommerance in the Argonne.” They were digging in during a German artillery barrage when a big shell hit immediately in front of them. York describes the experience: “I have dug on farms and in gardens and in road work and on the railroad, but it takes big shells dropping close by to make you really dig. And I’m telling you the dirt was flying. And then Bang!….one of the big shells struck the ground right in front of us and we all went up in the air. But we all came down again. Nobody was hurt, but it sure was close.”

After retiring, York became a tireless campaigner for education for mountain children, and eventually was harassed until his death by the IRS. It is one hell of a story. Read the whole thing.

Thank God for men like Sgt. York and all the other brave fighting men and women that have honored America with their service.

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Trackposted to Pet’s Garden Blog, The Virtuous Republic, Rosemary’s Thoughts, Faultline USA, Alabama Improper, third world county, Online Gym, The World According to Carl, DragonLady’s World, Oblogatory Anecdotes, The Pink Flamingo, Cao’s Blog, Big Dog’s Weblog, Democrat=Socialist, Conservative Cat, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Technorati Tags: United States, Military, Memorial Day, Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Repost