Since when has the concept of strength become a sin, as if to be strong means you’re somehow marked guilty of some crime? Since when is weakness seen as the overarching virtue for the entire West to aspire too? Come to the U.S. or Europe and we’ll be your doormat. Maybe this is just a result of the feminization of the West.
While I realize that Judeo-Christian concept of turning the other cheek, forgiving thy enemies, Christ’s death on the cross, and blessed are the meek seem to emphasize this way of thinking. What then explains our founding fathers, men like Washington or later presidents like Lincoln and Reagan, all Christians who led our country in war and ultimately through it?
It seems common sense, at least here in the Midwest, that if you’re going to forgive or turn the other cheek, it’s assumed that your cheek is still attached to your body and not hacked off by some agent of Islamic Jihad’s freshly sharpened scimitar. Christ did go to the cross, but only after it was made clear that his life was not taken, he freely gave it. This implies that if he’d so chosen, he could have and would have had the strength to save himself. He made sure he completed his mission on earth before allowing himself to be captured. Kind-of like Flight 93 completed their mission of saving thousands of people on the ground before dying a fiery death. Thankfully, those on flight 93 didn’t turn into pacifists. They were strong, they fought back and ultimately saved untold numbers of intended innocent victims in D.C. who wouldn’t have had a chance to fight back against a plane hurdling toward them.
I’m not a religious scholar, but blessed are the meek always meant the meek and humble before God, not before crazed human torches, the U.N. or fanatics trying to steer your flight into the ground.
I don’t know when weakness as a virtue became the fashion due jour in America or “the West”. Although I am observant enough to see how a population of little piglets can succumb to the tit of a huge government bureaucracy to the benefit of those whose appetites for power long to control the slop buckets. That’s fine if you’re a pig raised for the slaughterhouse, but that’s a little below the free men and women of the United States of America. Men and women who inherited such liberties as life and the right to own a firearm to defend it.
While I like to think of myself as compassionate and “feeling” toward mankind, I also take seriously my ability to defend myself. Would I naively walk into a dangerous city with all of my money and look to make friends just by the niceness of my face and not expect to be robbed, taken advantage of, murdered or worse? Then why is it some how acceptable for our nation--via Nancy Pelosi--to do that very thing on the world stage? Sure Jesus did it, but there was always the threat that if need be, God could provide whatever plague, column of fire, etc... that might have been required--the whole walk-softly-but-carry-a-big-staff concept. Now it’s walk-softly-negotiate-and use strong words. I can hardly see Moses stating to pharaoh, “Let my people go and if you don’t I’ll issue a UN sanctioned statement of “grave concern”. No, God dropped the hammer on pharaoh taking the first-born male population with him. I realize this is Old Testament territory, but no pacifism there and I know just enough about Revelations to make a somewhat educated guess that Christ isn’t coming again as the cherubic babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, either.
The fact is and the prompting for my rant came from comments made over one hundred years ago by a man who was not only a contemporary of George Washington, but also carried his casket upon his death. Colonel John Johnston was an Indian agent representing our young country on the frontier.. Col. Johnston wrote of President Washington, “A man undoubtedly raised by God himself for the redemption of his country from a foreign dominion, one whose long and eventful life was not stained by a single crime, and I might add not marked by a single case of weakness.”
So, no, John Cougar Mellencamp, real men are NOT pacifists...they are men of moral strength. "If you want peace, prepare for war."
2 comments:
I would say the strength is still there, where it has always been, with the individuals. The problem is we seem to have lost sight of a government... "...of the people, by the people, FOR the people." The PEOPLE on flight 93 had it, and no government to get in the way. The soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan have it, when the government stays out of the way. We all saw it during Operation Desert Storm, and we cheered it. And we saw and felt it at the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom, and then the media got into it. They have no respect for our military, they seem to hate any success our country has, and attack it at every opportunity, even if they have to make it up! I guess it is our own fault, we have listened to the media, and helped them destroy too many good men, so the good men no longer run for office of any kind. And that kinda makes our right to vote pretty weak, doesn't it? Don't look to the government, our forefathers didn't, and didn't mean for US to! Arm yourself, and prepare to defend yourself, your families, and your neighbors. THAT is the American way!
Hey gms3306!! I think I know you. :) I'll be doing a better job of keeping this site up to date so feel free to check it regularly and leave your comments often!
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