Bold Statements And Religions Of “Peace”
Sometimes people make bold statements because they’re right. Other times people make bold statements because they’re clearly delusional. I’ll start with the latter:
Extremist minority leaders really need to get over themselves. Despite what may be a temporary detour through Iraq, the civilized world appears to have decided to defend itself from their ilk. That defense is going to include preemptive or responsive or whatever kinds of strikes that seem useful at a given moment.
That said, other news presented itself today as a reminder that Islam is not the only religion that has had its teachings and symbols co-opted by the forces of evil. This is the bold statement that’s right:
“This was a reign of terror, and the cross was a symbol of that reign of terror,” said Thomas, who usually stays silent during arguments. “There was no communication, no particular message. It was intended to cause fear and to terrorize a population.”
I don’t plan to make this a diatribe on organized christianity’s “peaceful” history. I’m certainly not going to entertain any comments to this post trying to compare the goodness or badness of any specific religion or sects. I do want to point out that extremists have historically proven themselves quite adept at co-opting and manipulating popular symbols for their own perverted ends and it is those extremists that must be rooted out. And that, I think, is why that oath I took several times during the last twenty years invokes a duty to defend the Constitution from “all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Evil is not exclusively foreign, and not exclusively non-Christian. Evil is evil.
