Unfortunately, America is at a point that to be able to really feel again, to regain that compassion, it needs to be invaded and occupied in the same way that we have invaded and occupied Iraq. Then there might be a greater chance that Americans will be more reluctant to accept the invasion of another country. Maybe seeing and feeling the same level of destruction that we have inflicted on Iraq, at least the American public will understand why invading another country is unconscionable except in the most dire circumstances - which means after that country has directly attacked the United States. And that has not happened since World War II.Can we challenge their patriotism yet? Better yet, can we try them for treason?
Monday, March 17, 2008
Invade America
The Left generally comes unglued when we challenge their patriotism but in a post on today's Daily Kos (one of the Left's most widely read blogs) the writer actually said that the United States needs not only to be invaded, but occupied!
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22 comments:
The Daily Kos is a website on which anyone can post comments (diaries) as they wish. It's called an exchange of ideas, a novel concept, I know. This was not written by Markos or any of the other Daily Kos writers. To use this one misguided post to somehow paint half the country as anti-American is simply asinine. And, if you'll read the comments below the post, you'll see that virtually everyone condemns what this person wrote. When you post things like this it's just laughable.
______________________________________
"The House Republican brand is so bad right now that if it were a dog food, they’d take it off the shelf."
Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-VA)
I really find this hard to believe! Someone on the left that doesn't blame the United States for Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor! Could this be accurate?
My daughter gave your blog addy to me and I've been reading your posts, and been to links you've shared.
I appreciate the time you've taken to post information we will never see on mainstream media, if we do - it most certainly will be presented in a way that extends their God-less agendas.
Brent, I'm pleasantly surprised. I expected you to defend the poster on Daily Kos. When I said, "can we try them for treason" I was refering to anyone who would agree with that Daily Kos post. I really do understand that not everyone on the Left is quite so insane.
St.lee: I love it! lol!
connie marie: Welcome to my blog!
Of course you'd expect that. Because all liberals hate America, right?
Not all liberals hate America. I believe about 10 per cent of the country hate America and are self loathing.
As to being traitors.... Many including some Republicans and most Democrats in congress have crossed the line and are traitors. This would also include Al Gore, Jimmy Carter, and Clinton for their anti-American speeches overseas. Why the wimp Republicans do not call these traitors what they are boggles my mind. When you give aid and comfort to the enemy, it is treason. We all know it would not have been tolerated in WWII.
Ah, what a tangled (world wide) web we weave! The constant, continual cry of "treason" has by now reached the usage level of a cliche. Another highly over used word is "hero". Yes, I strongly agree that our soldiers should be held in VERY HIGH esteem and honor for their bravery in carrying out their duties, but the only "heros" are those, as in the past, who go above and beyond the call of duty. May I suggest that both "treason" and "hero" be given a rest; by both the Left and the Right
Professor Ed,
I know the university elite are very used to setting the PC standards for the country.
However, I do not conform to those rules. So, no you may not suggest giving anything a rest. Gore, Carter, Clinton, Reid, Murtha, Kerry, etc. are guilty of giving aid and comfort to the enemy, which is a definition of treason in the dictionary.
Well said, Professor Ed (although I can't quibble too much with calling any soldier a hero).
I understand your concern, Profesor ed, but don't you think that when someone calls for the destruction and occupation of America by a foreign country, they've crossed the line and that "treason" may be an appropriate word?
TREASON - This word imports a betraying, treachery, or breach of allegiance.
The Constitution of the United States, Art. III, defines treason against the United States to consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid or comfort. This offence is punished with death. By the same article of the Constitution, no person shall be convicted of treason, unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.
http://www.lectlaw.com/def2/t103.htm
"Treason" is an explosive word. I suggest before we level such at an individual, who if convicted, could be executed, we first consider the influence of the person(s) uttering such a claim. For example should we consider the person standing on a soapbox in the middle of a public park, should be invaded and destroyed, guilty of treason. On the other hand do we give the same consideration of free speech rights to a US senator who chooses to call for the invasion and destruction of our fair land, while they are in the Senate chamber? I consider myself a "moderate" Republican; who is constantly wary of the potential discouragment/trampling of our freedom of speech through, at the very least, strongly derogatory name calling.
But of equal importance, we also need to realize that using "loaded" words, as I stated in my earlier post to this topic, will, in the long term, only serve to trivialize the formerly potent meaning of EG: "hero", "traitor", "treason", etc.
Professor ed,
You make some good points (as usual :-) If I had it to do over again, I would omit the last phrase asking if we could try them for treason, but I still question their patriotism.
Professor Ed,
Do you not think there is a long list of Democratic officials who have given aid and comfort to the enemy (Islamic Jihadists)?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-schaeffer/obamas-minister-committe_b_91774.html
This is a great article for all the treason-mongers out there:)
(Jazzycat, I am talking to you)
l'oiseau,
Brent also posted a link to this article in the HuffingtonPost. I posted my response there, but since you bring it up here, I'll copy my response here too:
The article is by Frank Schaeffer, the son of the Evangelical philosopher and evangelist, Francis Schaeffer. Frank attacked Evangelicals for their hypocrisy in accepting Francis Schaeffer when he denounced America, and yet attacking Obama's pastor when he denounces America.
My resonse to the article is below:
FRANK SCHAEFFER: When Senator Obama's preacher thundered about racism and injustice Obama suffered smear-by-association.
MY RESPONSE: And rightly so! It was not the Right who imagined this association. It was Obama himself who maintained and admitted this association when he remained in Wright’s church for 20 years and called Wright his spiritual mentor!
FRANK SCHAEFFER: “But when my late father -- Religious Right leader Francis Schaeffer -- denounced America and even called for the violent overthrow of the US government, he was invited to lunch with presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush, Sr.”
MY RESPONSE: I’ve read Francis Schaeffer. I’ve seen his video series on “How Shall we then live?” I have his complete works in my office. I challenge anyone to produce a quote in which Francis Schaeffer “called for the violent overthrow of the US government.”
The best his son could do was this quote which in which Francis Schaeffer wrote, “If there is a legitimate reason for the use of force [against the US government]... then at a certain point force is justifiable.”
To say that there may be a time when force is justifiable is NOT the same as calling for the violent overthrow of the US Government! Francis Schaeffer was saying nothing different than what our own Declaration of Independence affirms:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government… But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
These words sound as treasonous to us today as they did to the King of England back then but Francis Schaeffer was saying that there can come a time when tyranny is so great that it is the duty of the people to rebel against it.
For example I think Francis Schaeffer would say that the people of Nazi Germany would have been right to violently rebel against Hitler when they knew that he was gassing millions of Jews.
I think Francis Schaeffer would say that the Jews would have been right to violently rebel against the attempted genocide of the Jewish people.
Just over 150 years before Christ was born, the Syrians, under the leadership of Antiochus IV, slaughtered about 40,000 Jews and sent 40,000 more into slavery. Antiochus then outlawed the worship of God (on pain of death).
Eventually, some Jews, under the leadership of Judas Maccabaeus, rose up to violently overthrow the tyrant. Judas recaptured the Jewish temple and rededicated it to God. The Jewish people continue to commemorate this event to this day in a feast called Habakkuk. Even Jesus celebrated this festival!
Francis Schaeffer was arguing that there can come a time when the tyranny is so great, the people have a right to rise up against it.
But we are a long way from that in America. In fact, I am so opposed to individual rebellion against government, had I lived during the time of the Revolutionary War, I believe I would have sided with England and the loyalists.
FRANK SCHAEFFER: Every Sunday thousands of right wing white preachers (following in my father's footsteps) rail against America's sins from tens of thousands of pulpits. They tell us that America is complicit in the "murder of the unborn," has become "Sodom" by coddling gays, and that our public schools are sinful places full of evolutionists and sex educators hell-bent on corrupting children. They say, as my dad often did, that we are, "under the judgment of God." They call America evil and warn of immanent destruction. By comparison Obama's minister's shouted "controversial" comments were mild. All he said was that God should damn America for our racism and violence and that no one had ever used the N-word about Hillary Clinton.
MY RESPONSE: No, that is not all Rev. Wright said. He blamed America for the 911 slaughter of 3,000 innocent Americans! (That’s like blaming 3,000 rape victims for the fact that they were raped )! He said that AIDS was a conspiracy by the U.S. government! He said that the U.S. government was responsible for black drug abuse! He has praised the racist, anti-Semite, Lewis Farrakhan. Contrary to Frank Schaeffer, these comments and actions are not “mild.”
Anyway, I think Frank Schaeffer is living in the past. The denunciation of America’s sins was much more common in the Christian pulpits when he and his dad were crusading than it is today. Many of today’s Evangelical preachers prefer to stick with psychobabble and are so spineless they wouldn’t take a stand on anything that violates modern standards of political correctness!
But be that as it may, America’s preachers are absolutely right to rail against the sins of America. It’s called “freedom of speech” and “freedom of religion.” It’s what our forefathers came to America for in the first place.
We are not attacking Jeremiah Wright’s freedom to say what he wants to say. We are attacking what he has to say! We condemn the racism of his church just as we condemn the racism of some white churches. We condemn his approval of Farrakhan who hates whites and Jews. We condemn Wright’s views about 911 being America’s fault. We condemn his views about AIDS being some kind of American conspiracy! We condemn what appears to be his deep hatred of America.
By contrast, Francis Schaeffer and the Religious Right do not hate America. We often hate the fact that America is being hijacked and turned into something that would make our forefathers turn over in their graves. But regardless of the fact that the Religious Right often condemns America’s injustices and sins, it is usually the Religious Right who are the most patriotic and most pro-American!
And when the Religious Right warns of America’s destruction, we are never threatening to bring about that destruction ourselves. We are warning that God may destroy this nation if we do not change course. This is not hatred any more than it is hatred to warn someone that if they do not change their life, they will ruin their life.
FRANK SCHAEFFER: Dad and I were amongst the founders of the Religious right. In the 1970s and 1980s, while Dad and I crisscrossed America denouncing our nation's sins instead of getting in trouble we became darlings of the Republican Party. (This was while I was my father's sidekick before I dropped out of the evangelical movement altogether.) We were rewarded for our "stand" by people such as Congressman Jack Kemp, the Fords, Reagan and the Bush family. The top Republican leadership depended on preachers and agitators like us to energize their rank and file. No one called us un-American.
MY RESPONSE: I find it amazing (and truly sad) that Frank Schaeffer can not distinguish between, for example, the Right’s condemnation of the killing of unborn babies, and Jeremiah Wright’s support for Lewis Farrakhan’s anti-Semitism and racism!
FRANK SCHAEFFER: Consider a few passages from my father's immensely influential America-bashing book A Christian Manifesto….
If there is a legitimate reason for the use of force [against the US government]... then at a certain point force is justifiable.
MY RESPONSE: I already responded to this quote above.
FRANK SCHAEFFER: And this: In the United States the materialistic, humanistic world view is being taught exclusively in most state schools... There is an obvious parallel between this and the situation in Russia [the USSR]. And we really must not be blind to the fact that indeed in the public schools in the United States all religious influence is as forcibly forbidden as in the Soviet Union....
MY RESPONSE: This is absolutely true. I don’t know how anyone could even deny it.
FRANK SCHAEFFER: “Then this: There does come a time when force, even physical force, is appropriate [483]... A true Christian in Hitler's Germany and in the occupied countries should have defied the false and counterfeit state[...483]. This brings us to a current issue that is crucial for the future of the church in the United States, the issue of abortion...[483] It is time we consciously realize that when any office commands what is contrary to God's law it abrogates it's authority. And our loyalty to the God who gave this law then requires that we make the appropriate response in that situation...”[493]
MY RESPONSE: The numbers in brackets were added by me. Note that this quote actually pieces together a series of four quotes.
The first three are on in volume 5, page 483 of Schaeffer’s Complete Works. That final quote is on page 493...fully ten pages apart!
When you string quotes together like this over ten pages you can make an author say just about anything!
The fact is that in context, Schaeffer was not advocating violence at all. Just two paragraphs down from the last quote Schaeffer tells us what the action on abortion should be.
First, to “aggressively support a human life bill or constitutional amendment protecting unborn children.”
Second, to seek to “overturn the Supreme Court’s abortion decision.”
And third, to take legal and political action against hospitals and abortion clinics that perform abortions.
As far as I know, these are still perfectly legal and very much a part of legitimate American democratic processes.
Not only did Francis Schaeffer NOT advocate violence here, he did NOT advocate intimidating abortion clinic staff and he did NOT even advocate protests!
It would appear that Frank Schaeffer has deliberately distorted his father’s teaching for his own political agenda.
I respect Frank Schaeffer’s right to his own opinions, but when he apparently deliberately twists, and takes his father’s quotes out of context in order to leave a false impression (and thereby smearing his fathers memory), something other than objective reasoning is going on with Frank Schaeffer.
FRANK SCHAEFFER: My dad's books denouncing America and comparing the USA to Hitler...
MY RESPONSE: If Francis Schaeffer was companing "the USA to Hitler" as his son Frank contends, then I would agree that this was dispicable. But the point of comparison was the killing of Jews by Hitler with the killing of unborn babies in America. For those of us who believe that unborn babies are human, and that the taking of innocent human life is evil, the comparison fits.
FRANK SCHAEFFER: The hypocrisy of the right denouncing Obama, because of his minister's words, is staggering.
MY RESPONSE: No, it really is not. It would be hypocrisy if someone argued that we shouldn’t criticize America, and then supported someone who criticized America.
But no one is arguing that we should never criticize America! Criticizing America is a very American thing to do.
The religious Right is not criticizing Obama’s pastor for criticizing America. We are criticizing him for the nature of his attacks on America. We are criticizing his ideas.
We think that blaming America for 911 is as hateful as blaming a woman for her own rape! (Just as a woman did nothing that deserved her being raped, the U.S. did nothing to al Qaeda deserving the deaths of 3,000 innocent people)!
We think that blaming the government for creating and spreading the AIDS virus is stupidity.
We think that supporting Lewis Farrakhan is racist and anti-Semitic!
But there is absolutely nothing hypocritical about attacking such views, and yet, for example, criticizing America for promoting the slaughter of millions of unborn babies, or for promoting sexual lifestyles that cause untold misery, suffering and even death!
For example: a father may criticize his daughter for dressing immodestly and provocatively, but that doesn't mean he doesn't love his daugher. But if he she got raped and he called her a whore and said it was all her fault...that is no longer loving criticism!
Similary, the religious Right criticizes America for her sins (just as every other group in America does!), but in our opinion, the statements of Jeremiah go beyond constructve criticism to the point of anti-American hate speech. And it is not hypocritical to try to make that case.
The Right generally comes unglued when we challenge their racism but in a post on FoxNews.com (the Right's largest purveyor of "news") a writer actually said that "blacks would be naked and eating bugs if it weren’t for white people," were "shipped over here to help build America" and "most whites have the opinion that blacks are worthless, lazy sloths who know only how to make more babies and steal everything not nailed down."
Can we challenge their racism now?
Brent,
Are you suggesting that conservatives are asserting that there is no such thing as a conservative racist?
I would think there are racists of all political persuasions, wouldn't you?
You can certainly challenge the racism of the writer of the comment you relate.
I was just using the same methods Dennis used in his original post above to show how ridiculous it is to use a single person's thoughts to paint a large group with one broad brush. I wasn't really making a comment on racism and/or conservatives.
Brent, the article I referred to was posted as a main article on one of the most popular liberal blogs in America (Daily Kos).
When you wrote, "In a post on FoxNews.Com..." you left the impression that this was an article posted by Fox News when in fact it was just some of the nut jobs who responded to Fox News.
The differnce is this: I am responsible for the content I place on the front pages of my blog, but I am not responsible for the opinions of those who respond to me since I never censor any responses to this blog.
The Daily Kos may not be responsible for all the idiots who respond to their posts, but they are certainly responsible for what they place on the front page.
But I think you're smart enough to know that.
By the way, if you're intersted in more about Francis and Frank Schaeffer you could read the article at http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=59599
There is a difference between "main posts" and "diaries" on the Daily Kos. Only the people who actually run the site (or people they give access to) can post a "main post." But anyone can post a diary on any topic they wish. That doesn't mean the authors of the blog wrote it, agree with it or condone it. It's a free exchange of ideas, some of them questionable. When you read a diary on that site, it's only one person's opinion - not the opinion of the people running the site, or even a significant number of people at all. But I think you're smart enough to know that.
In fact, the Fox News example is worse. When a person leaves a comment on that site in response to a piece, they are warned with the following: " FOX News encourages you to participate in this discussion; however, comments that include unlawful, threatening, libelous, or obscene content will not be allowed. For this reason, please note that all comments are moderated and therefore may not appear immediately after submission." So if Fox News actually screens comments, and in fact moderates them before they're posted, why are things like this allowed to appear on their site?
Brent,
The comment you referred to on Fox News was certainly disgusting but it was not not technically "unawful, threatening, libelous, or obscene."
Still, I agree that you have a valild point. When they claim to moderate their site, they must take responsiblity to some extent for the responses.
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